


someday in new york city

by Wallyallens



Category: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Post S3, historical timeline? i don't know her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:20:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22075375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallyallens/pseuds/Wallyallens
Summary: Post-s3, Midge is in New York after being dropped from Shy's tour. So is Lenny. As usual, they find each other in strange places.
Relationships: Lenny Bruce (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)/Miriam "Midge" Maisel
Comments: 77
Kudos: 353





	someday in new york city

**Author's Note:**

> writing comedy is hard

It isn’t that she’s avoiding him. Or at least that’s what Midge told herself.

For her to be avoiding him, she would have to be avoiding the smaller clubs that Lenny had outgrown, and trying not to get arrested, and shopping in the cute uptown grocery store she could no longer afford (and neither could he). And she wasn’t. Not really. Maybe she just _liked_ overpriced limp spinach, even if the store owner looked down her spectacles at her when Midge was short on her shopping and had to call Joel for a favour.

Besides, since she was no longer performing, she and Lenny ran on parallel lines, instead of bouncing around a Venn diagram. She was back working at B.Altman on the phones, living in her world - and he was living in his. Their circles no longer met.

It had been six months since she last saw Lenny in Miami. The excuse that Midge allowed herself was that they hadn’t exactly planned another time to meet again, there was no date circled on her diary to count down the days until their promised something. Most of the time, it wasn’t even planned; they just happened to be at the same place, at the same time, and she had someone to laugh _with_ instead of to make laugh for a night.

Midge wasn’t avoiding Lenny. She _wasn’t_.

“So, is there a reason you’re avoiding me?”

Lenny’s voice cut through the crowd. It always did. In a room of a hundred voices, Lenny’s somehow dominated, rising above the din in perfect clarity. Even in the middle of the city, against the honking of cabs hunting fares and pedestrians passing by, talking about the weather and their families and generating the cacophony of sound that was New York City, Lenny Bruce’s voice was loud and clear.

Midge paused mid-step as Lenny seemed to materialise out of thin air. She hadn’t seen him coming - Lenny simply appeared from the blur of faces caught in the current of the city sidewalk, and suddenly he was standing two feet away, as the crowd parted like the red sea around them.

The noise of the city melted away. (In reality, their stopping in the middle of the sidewalk on a busy evening was met with tutting and complaining, but in Lenny’s orbit, to Midge they were the only two people in existence).

For a moment, she couldn’t speak. All Midge could do was blink hard, not quite believing for a heartbeat or two that it was really Lenny standing there: same worn-in suit, same tired eyes, hands slung deep into his pockets and a lit cigarette perched between his lips. He was timeless. It was something she had always thought - Lenny didn’t have a home, he just sort of existed, as a part of the city as the rats on the subway and the street-corner bodegas and the buildings that towered above them. He stood just as tall. He was _big_ , as a person. Not in the way he stood - slumped shoulders, slouching gait - but in _who_ he was. In his presense.

Lenny _was_ New York.

Suddenly, he was in front of her, and it was like he had never been away. Like neither of them had.

With the thought, the rush of sickness that accompanied the memories of everything that had happened with Shy hit Midge, a runaway train thought that smashed through the station, destroying everything in its path. She was reminded of why she was here, in the city, instead of a thousand miles away. She remembered what she had done; how she had hurt a friend.

Swallowing hard, she dropped her gaze from Lenny’s, speaking quickly in a way that revealed its own insincerity.

“I’m _not._ ”

It came out petulant and childish, and a moment later she internally cursed her own stupidity for speaking before she spoke, _again_.

“I’m not avoiding you-” Midge said, eyes firmly on Lenny’s tie and not his face. It was green, a forest green, like the park in the autumn at the precise moment that the sun set. It would bring out his eyes, she thought, as she lied. “I didn’t know that you were in the city. I thought that you were still in Miami.”

In fact, she had been told by Susie who had been told by Kessler that Lenny was back in New York, and as always, out on bail. Conveniently, Midge had forgotten this fact and went about her business, not thinking about how Lenny would be performing just five subway stops away every Friday and that his name showed up in her father’s copy of the _post_ at least once a month.

“My lease was up,” Lenny replied. He was trying to joke, but there was a strain in his voice that was foreign to her. It wasn’t awkwardness, not exactly. It was as if Lenny was trying to put them back on the familiar footing of the last time they danced, but they had fallen a step out of time.

“You were living at a hotel.”

“I never planned to stay there forever. And besides, the jails in Miami were too hot. At least here, I know I can get a good night’s sleep in the pokey - and the people, they know me. It’s less ‘hey you, strip to your skivvies and hand over your valuables’ and more ‘ah, Mr. Bruce, we have your usual cell ready for you’.”

Lenny took a drag as he spoke, tilting his head to try and catch her eye.

“Sounds like my old doorman,” Midge replied, her voice too light to be anything but forced. “So you moved from one hotel to another, except this one comes with three square meals a day and a metal toilet.”

“They even gave me a metal cup to clang between the bars. With just five more visits, I think they’ll even upgrade me to filling it with water, too.”

“Considering the price of an apartment in this city, I’d say you got a good deal.”

It was easy to joke with Lenny, to fall into the rhythm of his voice without any prior knowledge and balance it. The ebb and flow between them happened naturally, as they traded quips, small smiles growing on each of their faces. Midge supposed that it was their version of small talk. With everybody else, she always felt a pressure to perform - whether that be to play the role of daughter, or mother, or lover; to make them laugh, or believe she was something more than what she felt like. It was like being on stage, all of the time.

She supposed the greatest performance she could ever give was being everything they all wanted her to be.

With Lenny, she didn’t have to think about that. She just knew that when the corners of his mouth slowly crept upwards in a smile, it generated warmth in the pit of her stomach. It was almost enough to make her believe that instead of feeling like she was standing on the stage, they could just be two people in the crowd.

“I knew you’d understand. Finally, someone who appreciates the value of good customer service.”

“I can see why you’d miss it,” she said, giving in and raising her eyes to his.

Lenny was looking back at her steadily. In the streetlight, his dark eyes glinted with the same danger she had felt the first time she had ever saw him. It was the same look that made every cop in a five mile radius seek him out like a bloodhound, but drew her in like a magnet. Not too long ago, he had asked her if Benjamin knew that she had been corrupted. Lenny had meant by comedy. She wondered sometimes if she had been corrupted far longer than that, from the first time she saw those eyes. Lenny was _dangerous_. In the way that he looked, and the things that he said, and to her most of all.

“It wasn’t the only thing that I missed.”

The words were soft - too soft for the crude mouthed comic who was known for his obscenity. Like the night in Miami, like the bar a year ago - Lenny was different when it was just the two of them. His words were gentler, his laugh a little more genuine; his sardonic tone replaced by something more earnest. It wasn’t a Lenny that the world knew. Somewhere along the way, it was a version of him that she was slowly beginning to recognise.

Midge didn’t know how to respond to this Lenny. It wasn’t a joke, his words far too tender to break with a cheap laugh. Back in Miami, she had given herself a night to see how it played out: to see what happened when she stared back at him and he never blinked, and what his hands felt like around her as they danced.

_Does he know? That you’ve been corrupted._

Lenny was still watching her with utter sincerity, waiting for a response that would never come. Midge didn’t even know what to think, let alone what to say - _her_ , **speechless**. It was an oxymoron. She was saved from having to reply as his face clouded, a dip appearing between his brows as a small frown settled on Lenny’s face.

“Shouldn’t you be somewhere in Norway right now, speaking to a room full of people who can’t understand a thing you’re saying and yet still can’t take their eyes off of you?”

His words were flattering and yet there was no flourish to accompany them. Lenny said them plainly, as a simple truth. Midge’s throat turned to ash. He was being _nice_ to her. Lenny was trying to make her laugh, to prop her up - but she didn’t deserve it. That was the inescapable truth that she had been trying to outrun for the past four months, and Midge was exhausted from the effort. 

“Yeah,” she replied. Midge didn’t tell him about how her careless words tore down her friend when he was already low, about how she had been so desperate to be liked that she hadn’t thought enough about being kind. She didn’t tell him about the look on Reggie’s face at the airport. Lenny would hate her if she knew - and that, she couldn’t bear. So Midge lied by omission and told him. “I . . . I’m not touring with - I’m off the tour.”

She couldn’t say Shy’s name aloud. In the past four months, she had tried to call him at the hotels that she knew the tour would be staying at; she had left messages, wrote letters. There had never been a reply.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Lenny replied. Unlike the bored, predictable way in which most people said it, he meant it. She could hear it in his tone.

There was a pause, like he was waiting for her to elaborate or explain, but Midge found herself unable to speak. If she did, she knew that her voice would crack and betray her. How could she look somebody in the eye who she respected - whose opinion she cared about - and tell them that she was a horrible person?

With no words to save her, Midge bobbed her head in an imitation of a nod instead. Contrary to popular belief, she hated to cry in public. For the most part she waited until she was home alone, or at Susie’s. At least there she could break down in solitude, and by the time somebody saw her next, her mascara would be perfectly back in place so that they would never know how it poured down her cheeks and turned them a dull grey. As her vision started to blur to streetlights and Lenny’s figure, the warning sign of tears pricking at her eyes, she turned to leave.

“You’re probably busy,” she said. “I should go-”

“Wait!”

Lenny caught her by the arm as she turned to walk away. His grip was firm, but gentle. She could have broken away if she wanted to. If only Midge’s body would co-operate with her panicked mind, she would have ran away the minute he appeared.

“Hey, hey-” There was that gentle tone again, his thumb rubbing across her elbow, “- c’mon, upper west side. Slum it with me for a little while? You look like you could use the company, even if it is cheap.”

He said it with the self-deprecating smirk that he wore like armour. Lenny used the nickname that he teased her with before, but there was something desperate in it now, trying to lull her back in, to where they stood on solid ground.

“You’re worth more than you know, Lenny Bruce.”

If he could be honest, then so could she. Midge was sure that there were tears in her eyes now, and pulled him suddenly close to her as an excuse to hide her face. She hugged him tightly, feeling his small intake of breath at the sudden attack, before Lenny’s hands slowly closed around her, resting on her back.

Midge counted to five.

Her life had turned to a steaming pile of shit for the second time four months ago: she was back living with her parents and her kids, handing them over to Joel three days a week and trying not to notice the way he smiled wider now like when they first started dating. Not to mention that she was working a crappy job she hated so that between Midge and her father there was enough money to pay for the apartment that had been a dream four months ago. It was a nightmare now. On that night, when she had made the decision, it had felt like freedom to walk through the familiar space and know that it would be truly _hers_ for the first time. That she had earned it, for herself.

Now she spent her evenings reading stories to the kids, too tired to do more than kiss them goodnight and listen to her parents bicker through the walls before she fell asleep for a few fitful hours before the sunrise brought another day of monotony. There was no more Gaslight, no more sweat and rooms that smelled like a toilet and the rush she felt at the end of a set when she walked off the stage and saw Susie’s face. She thought about it sometimes, the life of the microphone. However, these were only wistful thoughts crossing her mind as she connected yet another call for yet another complaint and felt her soul slip away.

Then she remembered the sinking feeling of watching the plane take off without her. Then she remembered the hurt on Reggie’s face. Despite the sinking feeling of regret and shame, she missed it - _god_ she missed it, even the bad parts, the bombing and getting arrested and the hecklers -

_1, 2, 3, 4, 5._

That was all the time she allowed herself to miss it, to miss _him_ -

Midge pressed her lips quickly to Lenny’s cheek, leaving a faint line of red. She leant back on her heels to catch a glimpse of his stunned face, and that almost made her smile for real.

“Take care of yourself.”

It was all that she could think to say before she walked away, knowing that Lenny wouldn’t have the time to regain his composure before she made her escape. As her heels clicked along the pavement, the crowds enveloped her, and finally Midge felt a tear slip free, which she hurried to brush away.

She didn’t look back. If she looked back, she was lost.

*

Lenny sent her flowers again a week after that.

This time he chose tulips in pastel shades of pink and blue and purple, tied with a pink bow - the sort of colours that Lenny probably thought that she would like. She imagined him in the store, musing over the flowers with no idea what grew well this time of year or what different flowers meant to a woman, trying to guess what to send to her. The meaning was down to her to interpret. Lenny had a knack for it, somehow. In the summer, tulips were one of her favourite flowers, standing tall and quietly colourful, not too brash or bright. In the summer, a bouquet of tulips from Lenny would have made her smile.

But it was December, and although Midge put them in water, standing them on the windowsill in her bedroom in order to catch the brief hours of sunlight as the days drew shorter, the flowers wilted quickly. There was something melancholic about their droopy beauty in the early frost; a summer flower sent out of season. Against the reason of the changing year, they lasted for a brief time, defiantly searching for the light to survive in her apartment.

For a week they were the first thing she saw when she woke up at 5:30am for work.

“You really should throw them out, or have Zelda do it.” Rose stood next to the flowers, critically casting her gaze over the dried petals falling onto the sill and floor. She pressed the heel of her foot to one and it crumbled, leaving only a faint pink stain on the carpet.

Midge had slept through her alarm after a week without a day off. Now her mother was in her room, waking her with all the gentleness of a brick to the head and criticising her flowers.

Doing little more than sighing in response, Midge tried to grab everything she needed to get ready as she threw on the first clothes to hand (luckily, she had set aside an outfit the night before. Never let it be said that Miriam Maisel was unprepared in the wardrobe department). She had a blouse and a skirt and a blue blazer, and most of the buttons in the right order. In a hurried scramble, she stopped by the mirror atop her dresser to apply her lipstick, noticing her mother still looking at the dried flowers in the reflection.

“Is there something else, mama?”

Rose jumped at being caught, the hand that had been half-reaching for a fallen petal on the windowsill falling to her side and catching Midge’s questioning look in the mirror. A worried, mournful look filled her mother’s eyes. Inwardly, Midge sighed, already calculating which train she could realistically catch after this conversation, how fast she could walk to the department store, and precisely how late she was going to be.

“They’re from your . . . friend, right? The “Activist” that got your father arrested.”

The air quotes around _activist_ were audible in Rose’s voice. It was the casual cruelty that stung worse than open criticism. Hearing the unsaid insult, Midge put down her lipstick.

“Yeah,” Midge replied, exaggerating the word to make her annoyance as clear as her mother’s disdain. “They’re from Lenny, _my friend_ , the comedian. The one who papa _chose_ to stand up for because Lenny is the kind of person who makes people believe in something.”

“I see,” Rose said, just curtly enough for it to cut. With her hand pressed against her chest now, she turned back to the flowers, her face arranged into a tight expression that couldn’t just be ignored.

Midge stood straighter. “Whatever it is - just spit it out already. I’m going to be late.”

“I just-” Rose started, stopped. “- I just thought that you’d finally put all this behind you. This . . . phase of yours. The comedy-” her mother still mouthed ‘comedy’ instead of saying it, as if it were a dirty word, “- after you got fired by Shy, when you got your job back, I thought that it meant that we could put this whole thing to bed.”

“This ‘whole thing’?” Midge echoed, mockingly. “You mean my _life_?”

“And yet you still keep dead flowers,” Rose said, as if Midge hadn’t spoken at all. “I can’t help but wonder why.”

Things hadn’t been the best between her and her mother recently. Since the Benjamin debacle, Midge and Rose communicated mostly via forced politeness in public and barbed comments in private. In the immediate aftermath of losing the tour, Midge had been left in a corner - a new apartment, bought with money that she would no longer be getting. For the sake of keeping it, she had gone back to her day job, and between that and her father’s new job at the paper, they just about scraped by. With all of her time occupied, Midge had taken a step back from comedy. Her decision wasn’t only about needing money. She needed time away to think about everything that had happened - about Shy and her voice, and what she used it for. The real consequences of her jokes had caught up to her, and Midge was so ashamed of causing harm that she decided not to perform again until she had worked out for herself _what_ exactly she stood for.

Not that Rose cared. There had been victory in her mother’s eyes as Midge went back to her shitty job at the shitty department store, which only doubled when Midge stopped going out to clubs at night, stopped performing, stopped - well, everything.

Midge was half-alive and nobody cared to see it.

“They’re not _dead_ ,” she found herself snapping, rounding on her mother in the small room. The argument wasn’t about the flowers, not anymore. Midge stepped towards her mother, feeling a surge of emotion that was becoming a rare thing for her as she protectively crossed to stand by the tulips. “Yeah, they might be a little beaten down, a little dry. In need of a ray of fucking sunlight. But they just need a little water and time, that’s all. They’re _fine._ ”

“Miriam, language.”

At her mother’s scandalised face, Midge waved a hand in frustration and turned her back again. “Forget it, you’ll never understand.”

Rose took a deep breath, “I understand more than you know. Including why you’d keep dead flowers from a _friend_.”

Turning in time to see her mother’s knowing face as she left the room, the heavy suggestion on the last word hung in the air, Midge was left alone in the room with the flowers. She wanted to scream. There was no one - _no one_ \- in the world who could get under her skin as well as her mother. Staring at the tulips, Midge resisted the childish urge to slam the door on her mother’s back by crossing the room to reach the flowers.

They sat in a glass jug, half-filled with slightly grey water. On the cracked white paint of the windowsill below, withered petals from the flowers lay crumpled, having fallen off over the week, with the card that came with the flowers propped up against the jug. Even on the stem, the petals were dried, cracking and discoloured. When Midge reached out to touch one, it was stiff and fell at her slightest touch.

The flowers were dead.

When she opened the window, it groaned with the movement. A second later, the early-morning commuters passing by the apartment building were surprised by a light shower of dried petals and tulips, which drifted to the street below and landed in puddles on the grey pavement.

The flowers were dead, but Midge kept the card, tucking it into the seam of her mirror. It fit alongside old photographs of the kids, and her and Imogene, and ticket stubs from gigs she and Joel had went to years ago. The older keepsakes were aged, fading slightly, making the crisp white card stand out.

On it, Lenny had written - and it was definitely his writing, no florist would leave such chicken-scratch handwriting slanting haphazardly across the page, defying convention -

_There’s still at least one person standing outside your playdate. When you’re ready, you know where to find me._

_You still owe me a someday._

_Lenny._

*

Midge meant to call Lenny. And this time she really did mean it - she thought about it, intended fully to do it - but the last time they really spoke, he was living at a hotel, and that didn’t exactly seem likely to have a forwarding address. So she couldn’t call him or write him a letter, due to the fact that she was back to not having a clue where Lenny lived.

“That’s not the same thing as not knowing where to find him,” Susie told her, with the same frank tone she used every time Midge needed calling on her shit. Or as Midge thought of it, the tone Susie used every time they spoke. “You know where he’s performing, and he’s stopped by the Gaslight twice just this week pretending not to be looking for you.”

Midge straightened her back, clutching the phone to her ear. “He did?”

“Yeah, it’s a fuckin’ nightmare. Since word got out that he’s been here, the place is packed. People keep asking me when he’s gonna do a set.”

“That’s a good thing, though, right?” Midge asked, thinking about the crowds of four she had seen at slow nights at the Gaslight.

“Sure, it’s good for business, if you like people hangin’ around waitin’ on the _famous Lenny Bruce_ to do a set that’s never gonna happen,” Susie said. “When they finally realise he’s not here to perform, it’ll be a shitstorm out there. And who do you think is gonna have to deal with that?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Midge responded like a dutiful friend. “You?”

“Yeah fuckin’ right, _me_ -” Susie inhaled deeply after she spoke, and Midge could picture the resigned drag of a cigarette she was taking. It’s hard not to feel for the other woman. The frustration was evident in Susie’s voice, and the hints of tired resignation in her tone had been growing more prominent every time that Midge had spoken to her recently.

“I’m sorry,” Midge said. Twisting uncomfortably where she stood by the phone, she began to fiddle with the cord, wrapping it around her fingers.

It was her fault that Susie was back working at the Gaslight. Another consequence of Midge’s big mouth was taking not only one, but _two_ friends down with her. Susie didn’t deserve that. She was a good manager, and should be working in her own office, for big stars, taking business dinners at the Ritz instead of a shitty diner. Susie’s life had taken the same downward spiral as Midge’s, falling parallel to the plane’s ascent that night. Losing Sophie as a client as well as Midge quitting took her back to no clients, working her old job at the Gaslight.

It was as if the past two years had never happened for them both, and they were right back where they started. As if it had all been a brilliant dream, and now it was time to wake up – except Midge had never felt more awake than on stage, and she was sure that Susie felt the same.

“Hey now – we talked about this, don’t do that-” Susie said quickly. “This isn’t your fault.”

 _It is_ , Midge thinks. But they’d had this argument before, and it always ended in the same way: her feeling shitty and alone. So she took a breath and asked instead.

“What did you tell him?”

“Who?”

She can hear Susie’s face in that word, the other woman’s brow drawn in under the rim of her hat, lips scrunched into the word as she made a face at the phone.

“ _Lenny_ ,” Midge clarified. The cord gained a kink as she twisted it. “You said that he was looking for me at the Gaslight. What did you tell him?”

“The same thing I’ve told everyone: that you currently don’t have any gigs scheduled.”

It’s the professional sounding line that the two of them had stuck to for the past few months. Ideally, it was a way to explain her extended absence from the stage and sudden departure from Shy’s tour. Realistically, it was business shorthand for saying that Midge was fucked.

Midge nodded at that, closing her eyes briefly. Good, that was good. It meant that Lenny didn’t officially know that she had quit yet – somehow, she didn’t think that him hearing it from Susie would be right.

Susie’s hesitant voice cut through her thoughts. “. . . Unless you’ve changed your mind? There’s always a spot for you-”

“- No, no,” Midge interrupted, louder than before. Opening her eyes, she winced at the thought of disappointing Susie again. “I’m still . . .”

Words failed her. Midge couldn't finish the sentence, because the way she felt too incomprehensible to explain. She was still hurting. Still worrying about fucking up again. Still too much of a god-damn coward to get back up there.

“I get it,” Susie said. Giving her a way out, as usual.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are, Midge. I know.”

Muffled static filled the space between them on the silent phone line. There was nothing that Midge could say to fix this, not this time. In the absence of her making a joke or Susie telling her that it would all be okay, there was just quiet. It was the kind of quiet that made itself known in the stifling way it warps time, making it stretch out, whilst simultaneously making the lack of sound speak volumes.

“Hey,” Midge said, lamely. “How about we grab dinner later in the week? We could go to the diner, just the two of us. Like old times.”

Things are different now, but Susie was still her friend. “Yeah,” Susie replied. “Sounds good to me. But for my sake, please – talk to Lenny. Otherwise I might end up being responsible for the homicide of some wannabe anarchist practically coming at the thought of speaking to Lenny at the Gaslight.”

It was enough to make Midge laugh weakly.

“I’ll talk to him if I see him. Promise.”

“See ya, Midge.”

The echo sounded empty. “See ya, Susie.”

*

After that, Midge managed to find a week of excuses before her luck ran out. Sooner or later, she had to speak to Lenny, and he was going to find out about her quitting – or worse, they’d have to talk about what almost-happened in Miami. That night had stayed at the corner of Midge’s mind for a long time. It wasn’t the obsessive, daydreaming constantly kind of thought that warped time to a rose-tinted memory; neither could she put it out of her head entirely. Sometimes she would hear a song and think of his hand running down her arm, or smell his aftershave on somebody standing too close on the subway. Some nights, she would sit on the fire escape, smoking, and in those quiet moments, Lenny would come to mind.

Such a runaway thought was what found Midge’s feet taking her towards a club downtown on a Friday night. There was no name above the door, no shining lights - it never was his style. But the street said that he would be there, so she called in to tell her parents that she would be home late, hearing the sigh in her mother’s voice on the other end of the line.

It wasn’t the Gaslight, and she wasn’t performing. That’s what Midge told herself and promised her mother. She was just visiting a friend.

As if ‘friend’ was an adequate word to describe Lenny.

The energy in the room was palpable. People were crammed into every available space, talking between themselves in hushed voices that were too excited to be truly quiet, so filled the space as densely as the smoke and bodies. Midge found herself standing at the back of the room, trying to ignore a young couple attached at the tongue to her left and a thin man wearing a beige (really, _beige_ ) suit looking at her sideways on the right. Forcing her eyes to stay on the stage, she kept her hands protectively over her purse and tried to lift her chin for a better view over the clustered heads. The stage was bare, empty aside from the microphone standing in the middle.

Struck by the itch to get up there, her knuckles paled as her grip tightened on her purse.

When the house lights dimmed and a spot lit the microphone, the hushed talk turned to thunderous applause. People rushed to their feet, a great surge of movement ending in a standing ovation; Midge pushed herself onto her toes to catch a glimpse of a figure walking onto the stage.

Lenny’s voice reached the back of the room. “I’m guessing that you either already know who I am, or have no idea whatsoever, from that reaction-” Laughter cut through the applause as the audience began to re-take their seats. “Please, guys, we need to keep it down or I'll get arrested for a noise disturbance before I even get a chance to say fuck.”

“LANGUAGE!” boomed a voice.

At the loud interruption, the laughter was renewed with an edge of nervousness, as people looked around for the source of the voice.

Peering over the crowd of heads, Midge managed to see Lenny standing at the microphone. Even from the distance, she could see the wry smirk threatening to tug up his lip. Giving a moment for quiet to fall, Lenny lowered his hands as the audience fell enchanted by his presence, a silence that felt almost holy gripping the room. Looking left and right, Lenny craned his neck around with an exaggerated mime of searching for the voice. After a beat, he straightened, gaze fixing on a light above the stage.

“God?” Lenny asked the light. Fresh laughter filled the room from the single word, and even Midge had to press a hand to her lips to keep in a snort of surprise. “Is that you?”

“DEPENDS ON WHO YOU ASK,” replied the voice. “IF I USED THE NAME YOU KNOW ME BY, MANY PEOPLE IN THE ROOM WOULD NOT UNDERSTAND IT - OR WORSE, THEY WOULD TRY TO PRONOUNCE IT THEMSELVES.”

Midge laughed aloud at that, louder than the people surrounding her, along with a few Jewish titters creeping in amongst the silence of the rest of the audience. Noticing the noise, Lenny looked up in her direction. He squinted for a second in her direction, but between the lights and the crowd, Midge doubted that he could see her. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not about that. After a heartbeat, he looked away and continued with his set.

Putting a finger sideways across his lips briefly, Lenny nodded thoughtfully before addressing the light as he stroked his chin. “You mean that there’s no one true religion? No great answer to solve everything in the universe?”

“THAT WOULD BE LAZY, AND INEFFICIENT.”

“Eh, nobody ever accused my people of that,” Lenny joked. For a second, Midge was glad that her mother had never seen Lenny perform. She would have fainted at the idea of there not being one true God with a capital G. A lot of people that Midge knew from the synagogue took Rose’s opinion that comedy was akin to prostituting her soul. Like Lenny, Midge joked about her Jewish parents and used culture shock between people to provide laughs about the stranger aspects of her religion.

Lenny took it a step further, building a bridge across the uncanny valley between the people gathered in the dimly-lit room as he continued. “But big guy, hear me out-” Lenny argued. Moving his hand from his chin, he leant against the microphone stand. “Look at the world. You got disease, poverty, _republicans_ . . . people dying and suffering in every corner of this city. And it’s just one of thousands. Think of all the wars fought in your name - and you’re telling me that you don’t even _have_ one?”

As he faced the light before the crowd, Lenny’s expression was the reserved, slightly guarded look he wore on stage. Between that and his dry, sardonic tone, it was hard to tell what he was thinking, although his still face was betrayed at times by eyes that glittered with amusement. Half of the audience seemed unsure whether to laugh at the seriousness of his questions, while some among the crowd began to nod and shout “preach”.

“And I’m just talking about America,” Lenny went on. “I have a theory, though, and I’d like to run it by you, to see if it’s correct. I think that you probably had the same problem when dealing with all the shit in the world as America does.” His eyes darted to the corners of the room, and Midge copied them - he was looking for cops, she guessed. Nothing to make him a target for being branded a communist than shit-talking America _and_ God.

“AMERICA? WHAT ABOUT IT?” said the voice, “ARE YOU NOT A FREE NATION?”

“Constitutionally, yes-” Lenny shrugged. “But you see, there are a few things that I’ve noticed of late. So here’s my theory: it occurred to me on a boat trip the other day across the bay - at the bottom of the statue of liberty, there’s a poem. It’s just a small thing, but it was the first thing that most people saw when they first got to our country; and most of us here are children of immigrants, who first saw the poem - it’s more of a promise, really. It says: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

As he quoted the lines, Midge found it hard to breathe, or to take her eyes off him. Most of the room seemed to be in the same condition. Absolute quiet gripped them - and not silence, oppressive and stifling - _quiet_ , the conscious choice of everyone to listen to what he was saying.

“A nice sentiment, no? And for a lot of people, that’s what this country was supposed to be. A place for anyone to build and create and make something of themselves. My grandparents, your grandparents-” he gestured around the room. “They all believed this - this _promise_ of America. But you see, that was their mistake. They read the poem . . . but they missed the small print.” A small laugh went around the room at that, breaking the quiet as Lenny grinned briefly at the release of the joke.

“There’s a much smaller plaque under the poem, and that’s where you start to see the restrictions to the idea. You can be poor, sure, as long as you don’t complain about it. You gotta look the right way, believe the right things, know the pledge backwards and promise not to think individually. I think that’s the problem - a lot of people, they just missed the small print. They didn’t know that there was a _but_ in the promise of freedom. We just need to make it clearer.”

Clapping his hands, Lenny said, “I propose a new sign, just under the other one – the small print clause. It’s simple, we make a sign that says: You’re Welcome, But-” He paused. “If people understood the restrictions and exceptions to the rule, now, I think we’d all be a lot more secure in what it is we’re allowed to be in this country. I, for instance, suddenly understand why I spent all those nights in jail wondering why freedom stopped at me saying fuck.”

“LANGUAGE.”

“Agh, bite me,” Lenny told the voice. He had gained momentum now, and was trying not to laugh as he finished. “So you see, I think the same thing happened with the creation of the Earth. You made the land and the sea - nice. The animals, the sky, the people - fine, whatever. You made a garden and filled it, but then - you had the small print. The wars and famines and lying that comes as a part of the contract, although we never saw it, it was hidden in the small print, you see. So when people pray to you asking why suffering exists, you don’t know how to explain to them that it’s just a part of the bum deal of life we got. Hmn?”

Lenny looked up at the light, which stayed silent for a moment. With a slight pout, he turned conspiratorially to the audience. “You look for God and it turns out that he’s a lawyer. Figures it would happen close to Wall Street. Is this you pleading the fifth?”

“I DO NOT OWE YOU ANSWERS.”

“That’s true, I guess,” Lenny mused. “Can I ask you one thing, though? Just one?”

“I SUPPOSE.”

“Considering the unpunished crimes of history and centuries of men who would have given anything to stand where I am now, to finally ask God a question, I have to ask-” Lenny paused, just long enough for it to work, “- How did the Yankees lose the ‘60 series?”

The audience burst into laughter. Lenny straightened, the light above him dimming as a small smile worked its way onto his face briefly. While she laughed with the rest of them, Midge took the time to look around the room at people’s reactions. Although the joke about the baseball had lightened the room, grounding the prolonged joke with a finishing laugh, the edge of his words lingered in the audience, crackling like electricity between them. Some were still watching thoughtfully, while others began to talk among themselves.

This was why Lenny was the best. He managed to get the laughs, but what he said meant something, too. It mattered. He made people question things, and that was what made him so dangerous.

As the applause started up, Midge walked away from her spot, heading for the bar to grab a drink before seeking out Lenny. She had only taken a few steps when Lenny spoke again, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up.

“But before I go, ladies and gentiles, there’s someone I would like you to meet. I could stand up here and talk, and talk, and talk some more, but there’s very few people who I would _listen_ to. One of them is here tonight. Now – can we get a light over here?” As Lenny spoke, Midge turned back towards the stage, feeling her eyes dry out as a bright light shone in her direction. Putting a hand up to block it, she did her best to communicate to Lenny that this was not a good idea – namely, shaking her head and miming slicing her own throat. Whether he couldn’t see or didn’t care, he went on. “There she is! I knew that was you I heard.” He was beaming at her, proud of himself for finding her. “Everyone, this is Mrs. Maisel - my wife, or maybe my sister. We never did settle on which, did we, darling?”

Lenny played the joke the same way he had in Florida. Back then, being swept off her feet into his performance had been exhilarating, and she had stepped into the spotlight with ease to walk alongside him in his world. Now, Midge wanted the floor to swallow her whole.

In short, she froze.

Light blinding her, panic made her heart beat like a drum played by a 7th grader in marching band who thinks that winning the state champion might make band cool enough for them to one day amass enough popularity to get laid. Midge couldn’t speak. With all the eyes in the crowd on her, and Lenny watching her, expression turning from amusement to cold concern as she blinked in the bright light, she couldn’t manage a single word. Her mouth hung open as she tried to think of something, anything to say, but in the end she just closed it firmly, shaking her head and dropping her gaze to the floor.

Lenny must have realised that something was wrong by then, because he killed the light on her instantly, swooping in to smooth over the situation. “I think that settles it, then – my wife would never miss an opportunity to hear her own voice, especially to tell me that I was wrong.”

The situation was salvaged by a small chuckle, although Midge could still feel the gazes of people nearby on her, wondering who she was and why Lenny Bruce had tried to include her in his act. Keeping her eyes firmly averted, she pointedly did not engage with any of them as Lenny wrapped up his set – she had choked already, there was no point in making it worse.

“I think I hear the tell-tale sound of sirens approaching,” Lenny said. “By my count, the police would have been called about ten minutes ago, which gives me a few more before they get here. I’m gonna make like the Almighty and vanish.”

Giving a dip of his head that could have been a bow if he could be bothered, Lenny walked off the stage to the cheers and applause of the audience. The noise in the room tripled, even as the venue host appeared on stage to try and reign in some order. As soon as Lenny was out of the spotlight, his face shifted to concern as he made a beeline straight to her. Midge kept her eyes on the floor until he was close, only daring to lift them for a moment and try to smile in greeting. She must have looked particularly pathetic, because Lenny stood in front of her only for a few seconds, head bent to get a better view of her face, before putting a hand on her arm protectively.

“Come on,” he said. Lenny’s hand drifted to her back as they began to make their way through the crowded club, heading for the side door. Thankfully, Lenny didn’t ask what was wrong. He remained steady as the moved together, giving a man who approached with an autograph book a disdainful glance and dismissing him with a pointed. “I’m busy.”

Ignoring everyone for her, soon Midge found herself outside the club with Lenny, still attracting attention. Self-consciously, she looked around, seeing eyes on them like glue. She was distracted momentarily by the flashing blue lights of a cop car, which slowed as it passed the club, as it went by, she saw the dark-shaded man inside watching them specifically. It was enough to shake her out of her own head.

Turning to Lenny, she jerked her head towards the car. “We’re getting attention here.”

“I’ve noticed,” Lenny replied. Unlike her, his eyes were on the people around them instead of the police, giving nosy fans a look that very obviously said _beat it_. 

“Get out of here?”

The nervousness in Midge’s voice was enough to draw his full attention. Lenny turned back to her, his dark eyes running over her with worry. He nodded firmly, his focus now entirely on her. “With you? Anywhere, anytime.”

It was like having the attention of the sun, with Lenny. He was so intense, so bright. Feeling herself warm at the words, Midge made a point of hailing a cab, not feeling safe to look at him again until they were driving away from the club and the police and all of the stares.

When she did, Lenny had cracked a window and lit a cigarette, but was still watching her intently. Wordlessly, he passed the roll-up over and she took a drag. New York flew by, framed in the window behind Lenny’s head. Each time they passed a streetlight, his face was briefly illuminated, although the shadows of the dimly lit cab cast his features into sharp focus. The second of light at every lamp was enough to see the concern on his face. Midge sat with her ankles crossed, purse on her lap as she glanced over, but Lenny had shifted on the cab bench to face her, knee bumping against her own as he watched her.

“You’re staring,” she told him. She didn't even have the energy to repeat the joke about a stray hair.

“Are you okay?” he replied, ignoring the accusation. There was no sugar-coating or evasiveness. Alone in the cab with him, with no audience and nobody depending on her, Midge sighed. They both knew that she wasn’t okay.

“Sorry about back there,” she apologised thickly. “I didn’t mean to-”

“Don’t be,” Lenny cut her off with a wave of his free hand. He tried to smile, but it was weak. “Same shoes, different comic. I’ve been there.”

She shook her head adamantly. “You really haven’t.”

It was true. In Midge’s mind, if she told Lenny what she had done - he wouldn’t be comforting her the way he was. He’d walk away, leave like everyone else. And she would deserve it.

Caught up in her own self-pity, Midge didn’t notice Lenny moving until she started a little at sudden warmth on her hand. Blinking, she glanced to one side to see that Lenny had moved closer, and his hand was on top of hers. It wasn’t grabbing, just lying there as a comfort, until Midge opened her fingers enough for him to entangle their hands together.

Lenny squeezed her fingers, and when she looked at him again, there was a strange look in his eyes. The teasing, romantic look was gone. His expression wasn’t the pity that Joel had faced her with, or the almost-smug look in her mother’s eyes, or the quiet relief in her father’s. It wasn’t the guilt of Susie’s face, or the resignation of Reggie’s. It was asking if she was okay as the tears stopped, burning with their own .... sympathy, not pity. Understanding.

“You look like you’ve had a long day,” he said.

She laughed humourlessly. “Try a long year.”

“Buy you a drink?”

Lenny watched her, head cocked to one side. Reflected in his eyes, she could see herself. There was that understanding again, like they knew each other, down to their souls.

Tearfully, Midge nodded. “Make it a bottle and it’s a date.”

The edge of Lenny’s mouth quirked up. “Well, as you’re keeping your promise, I think we can arrange that.”

*

The bar that they ended up in was everything a sleazy bar in Brooklyn should be: dim, cheap, and decorated exquisitely with dull red stains on the bare floorboards.

“Ah, the authentic experience,” Midge commented, nodding to them. “I should really tell Joel to invest in some bloodstains for his club. Really adds to the ambience.”

Grinning, Lenny offered her his arm to step over one particularly large stain. She took it with a mock curtsey and they walked arm in arm to the end of the bar. When they got there, he made a show of pulling out the barstool for her – she laughed as she sat, keeping up the pretense until a bemused bartender appeared in front of her – at which point she dropped her voice a decibel and said in her roughest accent. “Two whiskeys. Neat.”

Barking out a laugh, Lenny collapsed onto the stool beside her. Looking over sharply at the sound, Midge ducked her head down with a secret smile at the sight; it was the first time in months that she had made somebody laugh like that. It didn’t fill her with the same . . . rush, of performing for a crowd. She wasn’t left breathless – it was a softer feeling, seeing his face crinkle with a smile.

“Now you’re staring,” he said, breaking her thoughts. “Again.”

“Guilty as charged – wait, sorry, that’s your line-” she teased in turn. By this point, she thought, she should stop being surprised by how easy it is to talk with Lenny. It was like breathing or riding a bike: no matter if it was weeks or months or minutes since the last time that she saw him, they fell into the same rhythm.

Lenny missed the beat to look at her. “So,” he said.

“So,” she replied. Their drinks arrived. Midge finished hers in two gulps and motioned to the bartender for another. Taking a more steady approach, Lenny took a sip of his.

“Are we gonna talk about it?”

“About what?”

“Whatever it is that’s eating you,” Lenny said. “I know that look. I’m used to seeing it in the mirror, but you . . . never thought I’d see the day you looked as defeated as me.”

“We met in the backseat of a cop car,” Midge pointed out. “I was drunk and I’d just been arrested-”

“Yes, I remember your nightgown distinctly,” Lenny said. She promptly hit him on the arm, stealing the rest of his drink in a quick swoop in retaliation. “But that was different. I stopped by the Gaslight-”

“Susie mentioned. With a lot of expletives.”

Lenny sounded as sombre as his face looked. “She said that you weren’t performing anytime soon.”

“No,” Midge shook her head a little. “No, I’m not. I – uh, I’m taking a break. No, I’m not, that’s not true, I-” she rambled, took a breath. If she said it to Lenny, it felt more real. More than anyone except perhaps Susie, he had walked this world of comedy with her. “I quit. I’m quitting.”

There was silence for half a dozen heartbeats. Then Lenny said, “No.”

Just one word. Just “No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No,” he repeated. “People like you and me – we don’t get to quit. This isn’t just a fucking hobby or a job or a - a marriage.” They both snorted at that, although Midge was already working up a counter-argument in her mind. “It’s who we are. It’s – it’s in our blood! Right next to the genetic code for complaining. Boom - comedy. And you’re . . . Midge, you’re . . .”

“A call connector for B. Altman,” she supplied.

“No,” he said again, louder this time. “You’re _Miriam Maisel_. I meant it when I said that you were sensational. You’re too good to quit.”

“It’s not about good,” she told him. Looking down at the glass she was cradling, Midge shrugged. “It’s about right. I – I fucked up, Lenny.”

“You know that you’re talking to the reigning champion fuck-up of the year, right?”

He was sitting in the same way that he had in the cab: turned towards her on his stool, knee brushing against her every now and again as he moved, as if he were orbiting her. She couldn’t bear to meet his gaze. Instead, she ran a manicured nail along the rim of her glass.

“This is different. I . . .” Midge trailed off. The words wouldn’t seem to come, as she tried to formulate them in her head and push them past her tripping tongue. Without the jokes, it was harder to speak the truth. Lenny waited beside her, patiently giving her the time to work it out and ramble on. “I hurt someone, a friend. Shy. I . . . so while I was on tour, I found out something about him. And then I was so worried about choking at the Apollo gig when they put me on after Moms that-”

“Moms?” Lenny interrupted, leaning closer. “They put you on after Moms Mabley? At the _Apollo_?”

“Exactly! So Reggie-”

“Reggie?”

“- Shy’s manager, he told me to tell jokes about him to win the crowd after that-”

“Why would you tell jokes about Reggie?”

“No, not Reggie, _Shy_ -”

“Has anyone ever told you that you speak faster than a priest running away from a whorehouse?”

Midge took a deep breath, and blurted out. “I told jokes about Shy that hurt him. And I don’t mean I said his shirt looked ugly or told them that he had bad breath or something. I mean, really, _really_ hurt him. Not just his feelings – he could get physically hurt because of what I said, emotionally . . . I know what it’s like to have your life turned upside down by someone else. I can’t believe that I did that to somebody else. I was so scared of bombing myself that I took him down and . . .” she broke off, shaking her head fiercely. “I always thought of this – doing stand up, getting up on stage – as a good thing. It let me be free in a way that I had never been, it opened doors for me to . . . live for myself. Earn my own living, choose my own career. But I – I hurt somebody that I cared about, and I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

The awful truth was out there now. Midge finished her third drink. It burned going down and gave her an excuse not to look over at Lenny, a lump of ice settling in the pit of her stomach as she pictured the expression he would be wearing: disgust at what she had done, disappointment, maybe even regret at ever helping her get into stand up. She listened, expecting to hear the scrape beside her as he left. Seconds felt like years. Then, for the second time that night, Lenny put a hand on her arm.

She looked up to find him staring at her, head tilted to one side. There wasn’t anything even close to hatred in his eyes.

“You’re not a bad person, Midge.”

“I _am_. That’s the point.”

“No, you’re not. You made a mistake. That’s a bad choice, not a bad life.”

Lenny’s hand slipped to her elbow, resting there. Midge wasn’t sure when she had started, but the warmth on her face told her that at some point, she had begun to cry. He made a shushing noise as Midge hurriedly trying to brush away her tears. If she started to break down here, she wasn’t sure that she would be able to stop. Months of exhaustion weighed down on her, a ten pound dumbbell that had been lodged between her sternum, making it hard to breathe.

“Why are you being nice to me?” she asked, voice ragged. “After what I did, you should hate me. Everyone should hate me. Especially you.”

“That’s not possible,” Lenny said. His brows knitted together. “Why me especially? Not that I’m opposed to the attention, I’m just curious as to its origin.”

“Because-” Midge said, “- I took the thing you do and ruined it. What you do – up there on stage tonight, hell, _every_ night – you make the world better.” Lenny let out a laugh at that, loud and derisive. Tears drying instantly, replaced by a kindled fire, Midge turned to him more fully to argue. “No, I mean it! The things you say, they make people think for themselves, builds them up. Think about it – why do you think you get arrested so often?”

“Mostly for having the audacity to say fuck the government.”

“I mean, _yeah_ -” she agreed with a tilt of the head. “And why do you think that matters so much? All you do is talk – you’re not robbing banks or planning to take over the white house. It matters because you give people _hope_ ; you make them realise that they can question things. That’s the most dangerous thing of all. It’s what turned me from a housewife into a . . .” she paused. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I disagree.”

“You disagree with most people. It’s ninety percent of your act,” Midge quipped. Frankly, she shrugged, “I didn’t think before I opened my mouth and blew up not just my life, but somebody else’s. What I did on stage was wrong. You? You don’t just make them laugh, you change their minds. And if one person changes the way they think about the world, the world changes. Just for them at first, but if more people do the same . . . It starts small, but if enough people change the way they look, the world changes.”

There was a choked beat.

“Jesus, Midge,” Lenny said, looking dumbfounded. “That’s a helluvah pedestal to put me on. I’m not this – perfect person you seem to think I am. I’ve said hurtful things, made enough stupid decisions in my time. Believe me. There’s a reason I’m not married anymore and the most significant relationship in my life is with my postman.” He added with a nod, “And you.”

Although the acknowledgement out loud that she is important to him made her stomach flip, the room spin, Midge laughed it off. “I’ll count that as honoured company.”

“Listen,” his hand moved away from her arm, flexing as he picked up his glass again. “Don’t think I’m some fuckin’ hero, alright? I’m not. I’m not even . . . I drink too much and numb things out and I don’t even have the nerve to ask you out on a real date, so don’t do that. Don’t make me more than a person, it’s not fair on either of us.”

He looked angry, turning away from her for the first time. Lenny glared down at his glass, jaw locked, and Midge was left feeling as if she had placed her foot firmly in her mouth yet again.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said, blinking away fresh tears. Midge got to her feet unsteadily, grabbing her purse from the bar. “I should go-”

“Wait-” Lenny said. He caught her arm, and Midge was left standing nose-to-nose with him as he sat, close enough that she could feel Lenny’s breath softly on her face when he exhaled. It smelt of stale booze, and this close she could see the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. With his free hand, he wiped his eyes, ending by pinching his nose as he let out a long sigh before looking at her again. “Jesus fuck, this is hard. I’m not mad. I just – I don’t want you to put me up on a pedestal. It’ll be harder when I disappoint you.”

Midge wanted to say that he wouldn’t, but that was Lenny’s point. He would. Maybe not intentionally, but he would. They were only human. So she nodded, understanding what he meant; she saw the shift in his light eyes as he recognised the emotion and relaxed a little. Wordlessly, they communicated, back on the same page.

“And you’re not a bad person. You wanna know how I know that?” Lenny said. “You did a bad thing, yeah. But you _care_ that you did it. You’re trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again, thinking about how your actions affect the people around you. That’s more than most people do. It’s not intentional hatred or malice that’s the true enemy in this world, Midge. It’s apathy.” He let go of her arm, but she didn’t move as he lit a cigarette. Midge’s feet felt glued to the floor, which was a distinct possibility with the sticky boards, but also she didn’t _want_ to move, feeling the heat of Lenny’s body and tasting the smoke on her tongue as he took a drag. “But what do I know? It’s not the road to heaven that’s paved with good intentions,” Lenny said, holding the cigarette between two fingers as he looked up at her. “At least if I’m going to hell, it’s with good company.”

Despite everything, Midge laughed at that. It wasn’t the loudest or the hardest laugh, but it was real, catching in her throat at her surprise. Ducking her head, she laughed for a moment, opening her eyes to see Lenny hiding a smile of his own.

“You’re the only person who could tell me that I’m going to hell and make me laugh,” she told him.

He grinned back smugly, tapping his chest. “The one and only.”

They both laughed softly. Midge’s lips closed, the corners tugging up of their own account as her eyes closed for a second, sinking into the simple bliss of the moment. She was happy. It was a foreign feeling these days, but kicked to the surface as she opened her eyes to just look at Lenny for a moment. They were still in a shitty bar, surrounded by smoke and other smells she would rather not identify, and Lenny was still damp with sweat after his gig and she was sure that her eyes were puffy and red and looked far from her best, but to her, it was as close to heaven as she was likely to get.

The air around them charged, she stared for a second too long. Lenny did the same.

Quickly, Midge leaned in and kissed Lenny.

It was not a particularly long kiss; they did not cause a scene with their passionate display and end up in the papers. Neither was it a kiss that they could write off as a friendly peck between friends. But she kissed him, hands landing on his collar and tugging him towards her and feeling his lips curve in surprise before melting into her, his left hand resting on her back, holding her close. She could feel the heat of the cigarette in his right hand close to the skin of her back, and as she moved her lips to deepen the kiss, her nose bumped awkwardly against his.

By the time she broke it off, pulling away as her right hand moved from his collar to the edge of his jaw, feeling the faint line of stubble indicating a few days without shaving, they both were slightly breathless. Panting, Lenny blinked up at her as she stood close, wearing a comical expression akin to a slapstick comic who had been hit in the head with a particularly large mallet.

“So that’s what it takes to shut you up. Someone should tell the cops, it’d put a new spin on the saying ‘fuck the police’.” She grinned, and his face twitched like he wanted to smile, but couldn’t rearrange his features from their stunned position. Midge pretended to frown down at him, tapping him on the forehead with her knuckles. “Did the wind change? Well, at least I’m not the only one who froze tonight.”

Knowing that like all men, his brain would have clocked out for the night the moment that her lips touched his, Midge stood up and began to walk smugly towards the door. Glancing over her shoulder to see Lenny staring at her, she mimicked the way he walked; making a strange gesture with her hands that seemed enough to wake Lenny from his stupor. Yelling out “hey!”, he stood and followed her. His longer legs made up for her early exit, and he had caught up with her by the time she stepped onto the pavement.

“What are you doing?” she asked, looking up at him but accepting his coat when he offered it.

“A gentleman walks his date home,” he replied. Lenny tried to look casual with his shrug, but Midge just laughed, pretending to look around.

“There’s a gentleman coming?” she asked. “When’s he getting here?”

“After the Rabbi,” Lenny replied, having regained his composure just enough to think. Lighting yet another cigarette, he offered her the first drag as they began to wander down the street looking for a cab to flag down. “We need a witness, you see.”

“Oh, so we’re getting married now. I see. That escalated quickly from date to the next fifty years listening to me snore.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad to me,” he said. Lenny’s tone softened enough to catch her attention, making Midge look over at him, lightning-fast. Realising that it broke the joke with emotions, he added with his hands help up. “Hey, you’re the one who kissed _me_. You wouldn’t leave me a ruined man after having your wanton ways with me, would you?”

Midge scoffed. “Your reputation was ruined long before you met me, honey.”

“True, true-” he mused, taking a drag. “But if we’re married, think how much cash we could save sharing cabs to clubs and police stations.”

“And they say romance is dead,” Midge laughed. Step for step, they matched each other. She had crossed the line between them, and nothing terrible had happened. The world didn’t end, there wasn’t shouting in the streets, New York didn’t shine any brighter or blackout. The only consequence was the smiles they shared held a secret, and Midge felt excited like a schoolgirl again, walking home with a pretty boy with hope that she would see him again.

That night, Lenny left Midge on her doorstop. She gave him back his coat, and he wished her goodnight like a gentleman (the Rabbi must be running late, he said. It was okay, though, because Midge’s mother would have taken it up with the Almighty Himself if she got a quicky wedding). It was the most alive that she had felt in months. Giving him one last smile, the one she saved just for him, Midge caught his hand and squeezed it.

“Goodnight, Lenny.”

Framed by streetlight, he looked down on her, lips losing the fight with the rest of his face to grin absurdly. “Night, Midge.”

She made it almost all the way inside before something occurred to her. Swinging around, she turned to see Lenny standing in exactly the same spot, watching her go.

“Hey-” she called. “You never did say – how did you know that I was there tonight? At your gig?”

He shrugged, attempting nonchalance. “I heard you laugh during the set.”

“There was a whole room full of people laughing. How on earth did you hear me?”

“There were other people there?” Lenny replied, feigning surprise. He pitched his brows together, scratching his chin as he looked at her, shaking his head and pouting. After a moment, a smile caught the end of the mime. “Funny. I only saw you.”

Midge wanted to go back and kiss him again. Instead, she turned to hide her blushing cheeks and took the elevator up to her apartment, leaning against the back wall and pressing a cold hand to her face, trying to cool it down. Hoping that she wasn’t too obviously flushed or looking guilty, she tried to keep the smile off her face as she got home late, but it was a battle happily lost.

*

Two days later, at about 11am, Midge was so bored at work that she was half-asleep. Her eyes were itching, threatening to fall closed as she sat in front of the call switchboard, so she blinked hard at the flashing red lights, taking a gulp of cold coffee and noticing that it had left a brown rim mark on the station.

She was frowning when one of the other girls called, “Hey Midge, I got a call for you-”

Glancing over her shoulder, Midge focused on the co-worker speaking. At her confused expression, the other girl gave an exaggerated shrug that said _hell if I know what this is about_.

Apprehensively, Midge accepted the call. “B. Altman, how may I direct your call?”

“I love it when you talk dirty to me,” a voice at the other end of the line said. Instantly, Midge woke up as if electrified, letting out a laugh that drew the attention of her co-workers.

“Lenny? What are you doing calling a department store?” She recognised his voice instantly. As if that will make her closer to him, she moved closer to the phone as he replied.

“Got tired of writing my own jokes, decided to go with store-bought from now on. Got anything for me?”

“Let me see . . . ah, here you go. I got a great one here about a comic that walks into a bar.”

“And the punch line?”

“His life,” Midge replied. Even despite the crackling, thin line, his laugh lit up the room. She wished that she could hear him more clearly. She knew that those thirty seconds of hearing Lenny laugh was going to be the highlight of an otherwise dreary day. “The reception on your end is terrible,” she said. “Where are you?”

“Uh, shit. The 99th precinct, I think.”

Midge sat up like a rod had been forced down her spine, clutching the phone closer to her ear. With a look around confirming there were several gossiping eyes on her, she whispered. “You’re in jail?”

“This is hardly news.”

“Why are you calling _me_ from jail?”

“My lawyer’s voice isn’t nearly as sexy as yours,” Lenny replied. She could hear the bastard’s smirk. “I mean, sure, it’s a little sexy if the dulcet tones of an elderly Jewish man after sixty years of chain-smoking and singing Hazzan every week does it for you, but compared to your upper west side tones-”

“Lenny!” Midge couldn’t believe her ears. Caught between amusement and concern, she settled on exasperation. “Call your lawyer!”

“I can’t. You only get one phone call in your constitutional rights. You’ve been here before; you remember this – although maybe you don’t.”

Ignoring the jibe at their drunken meeting in jail, she asked. “If you only get one call then why did you call me?!”

“I wanted to hear your voice.”

It was simple: she was going to kill Lenny Bruce. And then Midge could make her own jail phone call to the press, to tell them that the bastard deserved it, for making her lose her mind at work. She pulled the phone away from her ear briefly, pressing the receiver against her forehead and ignoring the blatant stares that she was receiving. By the time she put it back to her ear, Midge had composed her voice, not wanting to let him win by knowing that his sweet words had worked.

“I’ll be there in an hour,” she said.

“That’s not why I called.”

“You got somebody else to bail you out? A chorus line of corrupted women to give heart attacks?”

Lenny laughed breathily. “There’s only you.”

“Then I’ll be there in an hour,” Midge said, and hung up.

She ditched work at mid-day, citing ‘women’s problems’ to the abject horror of her male manager, and tried not to laugh as she skipped out towards the subway. A cab would have been faster, but she needed all of her cash for the bail money and besides, after calling her out of the blue and making her pulse jump like that, Lenny deserved to sweat in a cell for a while to cool off.

“I’ll pay you back,” was the first thing Lenny said to her, walking down the stairs at the station. It was so much like the first time she really saw him that it’s hard for Midge not to smile.

“I know you will,” she replied, “I’m not a cheap date.” They walked out of the precinct together, Lenny fumbling with his bag of personal items, juggling keys back into pockets and a cigarette into his mouth. She jerked her head towards the station. “What were you in for this time?”

“Ah, you know – armed robbery, bear baiting, ecocide . . .”

Midge frowned. “You killed the environment?”

“Murdered my houseplant,” he confirmed with a mock sad nod. “Death by neglect, I’m afraid . . . speaking of, two days and no call? You’re killing me.”

“I don’t have your number!” she argued back, turning towards him. “You didn’t call me, either. At least you know where I live.”

“I tried, but your doorman is very imposing, with the coat and the gloves. Not to mention your mother-”

“But darling-” she said, a hand on her hip, “- how are we going to get married if you’re too scared to enter my building?”

He snorted, shrugging. “I get inventive, learn to scale redbrick. Besides, I’m not scared of your mother – she did bail me out once. Looked at me like I was something she stepped in, but did it anyway. Nice lady.”

“And she’d love any man that would have a ruined woman like me,” Midge said sarcastically. “Although you _are_ a comedian – I think she’d rather sell me off at the next cattle market to a toothless farmer named Sloe Jim to be a milk maid than see me on stage again, let alone married to a comedian.”

Lenny winced. “Ouch. So . . . you’ve been thinking about it?”

His tone changed as he asked, turning serious as he looked at her from the corner of his eyes. It was a surprising question. Midge blinked in confusion at the bluntness of it, rolling her shoulders as she mused.

“I mean, I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t thought about it since the other night. It wouldn’t be simple logistically – there’s the matter of the apartment and the kids, not to mention my parents reaction to it. But . . . it’d be worth it, I think. I think I could be happy.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it.”

“Not that I’m saying it’s definite – there’s a lot to think about, of course.” As she spoke, Lenny nodded in agreement, and Midge was a little taken aback at how emotionally honest he was being to have this conversation. Not many men would. “If we were married-”

“Whoa, wait – now you’ve lost me. Married?”

Lenny stopped in his tracks. Looking at her as if she had grown a second head, his eyes widened with the male fear she had been waiting for; Midge paused a few feet away and turned back to him. Confused at his delayed reaction, she replied.

“Yeah, like we were talking about. You asked if I’d thought about it?”

“No, I didn’t-”

“Yes, you _did_ -”

“You were talking about being back on stage!” he argued. “I asked if you had thought about it!”

Oh.

Oh, _shit_.

“Fuck me,” Midge said aloud. A woman passing by gasped in scandal, but Midge didn’t care. The world really was ending now. She was going to die of embarrassment. The concrete might as well liquefy at her feet now and suck her in like quicksand. Here lies Midge Maisel, who didn’t know when to stop talking. “I thought you meant – oh, shit. Shit shit shit-” She paced as she spiralled, panicking. Lenny was _laughing_ , the bastard. Midge wondered if the heat in her face was as noticeable as it felt, and snapped at him hysterically. “Don’t look at me!”

“What?” he choked out through his laughter.

“Turn around!” she ordered bossily, shoving him by the shoulder until Lenny was facing away from her. She turned on heel herself, until they stood back-to-back on the sidewalk, Lenny trying to stifle his laughter and Midge wondering if a passing car was going fast enough to put her out of her misery. “I can’t – I can’t look at you right now. Fuck. Stop laughing!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry-” Lenny said, sounding entirely unapologetic. “Listen, I’m flattered and all-”

“Fuck you,” Midge mumbled, pressing her face into her hands to hide her embarrassment.

“It seems like you’re really trying to,” he replied without a beat. Midge felt his back bump into hers with silent laughter. Oh, she was dragging him under the wheels of the next car that passed along with her. He deserved it. She groaned miserably from underneath her palms. “Hey,” Lenny said, his laughter stopping. “It was an easy mistake to make. But you see the thing is – and I realise that you may not actually know this, with your track record of relationships – but most people do this thing called _dating_ before the glass stomping and debt. It’s a modern miracle, really.”

“I hate you,” Midge mumbled. “Please walk away without looking at me while I jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“How about Saturday at seven?” Lenny said, ignoring her misery. “I’ll buy you dinner, maybe hit a club or two.”

Midge peeled her hands away from her face. “You’re asking me out on a date after that train-wreck?”

“That a yes?”

She didn’t quite believe it. Straightening, she put her hands down by her sides and felt the cool breeze on her cheeks, relieving the fierce heat that had settled there. Lenny was asking her out. After she made a complete idiot of herself. Was he insane?

“I suppose it beats seeing what the Hudson looks like from underwater,” she replied. This time, when she felt his shoulder blades bump into her as he laughed, she bit her lip to control her own smile. “One condition.”

“I’m not putting out,” Lenny quipped.

“Walk away now without looking at me. I can’t look you in the eye for the rest of the day.”

“Midge, it really wasn’t that bad.”

“Humour me,” she pleaded. Reaching out blindly, Midge caught the edge of his sleeve with her fingers, feeling down until she met his hand. His fingers curled around hers on instinct, and she was relieved that he couldn’t see a new wave of red break out on her face. If she didn’t get control of herself around him soon, she was going to get arrested for being a communist.

“Okay,” Lenny agreed. “No peeking. Jesus, it’s like we _are_ getting married.”

“Saturday,” she repeated, “seven – can we make it seven thirty? I can put the kids to bed before I go that way.”

“Seven thirty it is,” he replied. “I’ll see you then, since I apparently cannot turn around now.”

Lenny’s fingers flexed in her own, their warmth vanishing a moment later. She heard his faint laugh as he walked away, but stood for a moment, processing how her day had drastically changed from one phone call with Lenny. Shaking her head a little, a nervous, hopeful smile fleetingly passing across her face, Midge walked back towards the subway station.

*

On Saturday, Midge rushed through an off-key version of goldilocks for her kids, in which there was only one bear instead of three.

“What happened to the other two bears?” Ethan asked her. It was the most he had spoken to her in a week, and yeah, _now_ the kid gets chatty.

“Teddy Roosevelt and a shotgun,” she replied, pressing a kiss onto his forehead. “Goodnight!”

She left her son mystified as she hurried back to her room, closing the door behind her and locking it. The last thing she needed was for her parents to see her leaving for a date. They’d ask who it was with, and she would be late from the consequential three-hour lecture from her mother. Midge had decided that nothing was going to ruin her night.

Over the last few days, she had chosen and then changed her planned outfit half a dozen times. After the dress that she had worn in Miami, she needed something to step it up – and that dress was _the_ dress, the one she wore to really impress company, so she was stumped for a while. She thought about going classic gig dress – black, refined, classy. But he had seen her half a dozen times on stage in variations of that outfit. So then she spent a night considering going for something wild – bright, or strapless, or provocative – but apprehension got the better of her, and after laying one on him last time they went out, she didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. She wasn’t rushing into bed with him. Whatever this was between her and Lenny . . . it felt worth taking the time on, even if that meant taking it slow for now.

In the end, she chose a simple dress with a fashionable but not too revealing jewel neckline. The green silk flowed nicely as she walked, swishing around her calves, and she paired it with a black beaded bag that she had found at the cutest little boutique in Vegas. Susie had pointed out that it was more of a pawn shop than a boutique, which Midge disagreed with – it was from _Vegas_ , and therefore glamorous. That was the rule.

Dressing quickly by her standards (tour had proven that a full face of make-up could be applied in just twenty-five minutes, in a pinch, which was a remarkable discovery for her), Midge proudly examined her outfit in the mirror, twisting from side to side to see how the dress caught the light. It was perfect. She was a genius. Grinning, she glanced out of the window, looking for a cab outside – there was nothing yet, so she took a seat to wait for a few minutes. After all, it was early yet – she checked her clock, seeing that it was just gone seven-twenty-six.

At seven-thirty, there was still no cab. It wasn’t too surprising – glass houses, stones, she could hardly judge anyone else for their punctuality.

At eight, she began to pace back and forth, risking her look by standing on the fire escape for a better view to the sidewalk in front of the building. There was still no Lenny.

At nine, she pulled a bottle of wine from the hiding spot under her bed and took a swig.

By eleven, Midge was half-asleep when a sound from the corridor roused her. She looked at the clock, heart jumping as she scrambled to her feet, rushing out into the hallway to see what the source of the noise was. Her dress was crumpled from where she had sat, and her make-up was smudged onto her palm where she had fallen to sleep – but it didn’t matter.

The smile on her face died when she came face-to-face with her father in the corridor. He was wearing his favourite striped pyjamas and blue slippers, and looked across her outfit before lifting the mug in his hand.

“I wanted a glass of milk,” he said.

“Oh,” she replied. “I’m sorry papa, I thought you were-”

“Yes?” he said, eyebrows up. Even in the darkness, she could read his expression: curiosity mixed with disappointment.

“No one,” she backtracked. Shaking her head, she took a few steps backward down the corridor, as it dawned on her that Lenny wasn’t coming. He had stood her up. Midge felt two feet fall. “I . . . I didn’t mean to scare you. Goodnight, papa.”

Feeling tears well up in the corners of her eyes, Midge is almost to her room to cry and finish the bottle of wine when her father’s voice stopped her.

“Miriam?” Turning, she saw him standing in the same place that she had left him, looking at her sadly. “You look beautiful. Whoever it is that you were supposed to be meeting, it’s _his_ mistake.”

She tried to smile. It came across as weak and broken by the trembling of her lips as she fought the tears threatening to burst the dam, leaving devastation in their wake. After a moment, her father nodded once and walked away, and Midge slowly walked back into her room.

*

Three days later, Midge was woken by her mother knocking on the door. By the sunlight streaming in through the window, it must have been close to mid-day, although Midge still flipped off the offending light as she cracked her eyes open. She felt awful. There was a hollow feeling in her chest, a sinking sensation that accompanied the knowledge that Lenny had stood her up. She had been miserable all weekend, and called in sick to work, lying about food poisoning.

“Miriam?” Rose said, muffled by the door. “Phone for you.”

“Get ‘em to call me back, I’m sick!” Midge lied.

“It’s that . . . woman.”

Wondering what on earth was urgent enough for Susie to call her while the sun was out, Midge begrudgingly crawled out of the bed and into the living room. Slumped on the couch, she picked up the phone receiver and asked grumpily. “Susie? What the fuck are you doing awake before 6?”

“Funny,” Susie replied dryly. “You heard about Lenny?”

Midge felt a kick of rage wake up inside of her. It was the part of her that told Joel that he wasn’t forgiven, that yelled at her mother about Benjamin; that made her want to kick whatever man was nearest in the balls at any given moment.

“That he’s a prick?” she grouched. “I got the message loud and clear.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Susie asked. “You fell out with Lenny or something? Because I don’t gotta manage your shitty personal problems anymore.”

“Then why are you calling me?”

“Because I’m your friend,” Susie said, sighing. “Which I guess does mean sorting out your shitty personal problems. Fuck.” Midge grunted in reply, a noncommittal noise that translated as: _sucks for you_. As the quiet stretched out, Susie spoke again, this time in a less gruff tone. “It’s not like you to shut up for this long. Are you okay?”

“M’fine,” Midge replied.

“Yeah, no you’re not,” Susie responded. There was an edge of genuine concern in her voice now that on any other day, Midge would have joked about. “Spill it. What’sa matter with you? Chip a nail? Break a heel? Wait, I know – you found out that unicorns aren’t real, right?”

Offended, Midge argued, “I’m not six, and I’ll tell you where to stick a unicorn horn-”

“There you are,” Susie said. “Now, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

It’s been days since her not-date, and Midge hasn’t talked to anyone about it yet. She didn’t want to. She wanted to bury herself in her bed and never leave. But Susie let the silence stretch uncomfortably, until Midge let out a groan and relented. “He stood me up. We were supposed to go out on Saturday – like a _date_ -date – and he never showed up. I know it sounds stupid, but I just thought – I thought it was more than that. That it meant something. It did to me.”

The words poured out of her, recklessly, until Midge was empty. She felt lighter as she let them go. Once she had said it, once it was out there – they were just words, and the world could do with them as it liked. Susie could laugh or mock her or try to understand her, it didn’t matter; Midge felt better just for having them off her chest.

“Shit, Midge-” Susie said. “You really do win the repressed emotions championship, you know that? At least you didn’t fuck your husband this time.”

“Ex-husband,” Midge corrected. “And you’re only pissed because you would win the silver in that competition.”

“You really don’t know, do you?” Susie said, breaking the cycle of jokes. It threw Midge off guard.

“Know what?”

“Lenny got arrested on Friday night.”

Midge frowned a little. “Lenny is always getting arrested. That’s nothing new.”

“But this time it’s different. The DA is making a huge deal out of it this time – they’re planning to put him on trial for obscenity. The press have been hounding Lenny all week, not to mention the cops. Midge,” Susie hesitated, sounding a little more gentle when she said. “The cops, the law, fuck – the _governmen_ t, they’re gonna make an example of him. Throw him under the bus to see if they can get any of this shit to stick.”

The words took a while to sink in, mostly because Midge felt as if the room had started to spin violently. While Susie was talking, Midge’s grip on the phone receiver had grown tighter, as her heartbeat rapidly sped up, peaking with anxiety as what Susie said somehow kept getting _worse_. It sounded impossible. Sure, Lenny got into trouble, he got arrested – but he got bailed out the next day and laughed it off. He _always_ laughed it off.

“Midge?” Susie said, somewhere far away. Midge heard her, but Susie’s voice was faint, drowned by the blood rushing through her ears, stealing away sound. Her heart was beating so quickly that it felt akin to putting a vibrator in her chest. She was shaking. It was a different kind of numbness to the slow, creeping sensation of dread at monotony that had been infecting Midge’s thoughts and life for the past few months.

This numbness was being dunked into icy waters unexpectedly. It came upon her all at once, and she floundered. In the midst of the swirl of emotions, rising and threatening to shut out the sun, Midge tried to make sense of the news that Susie had told her. Lenny was in trouble. It was bad. She needed to do something about it.

But the only thing that Midge could think to say was: “ _Fuck_.”

*

She heard them before she saw them. Having obtained Lenny’s new address from Susie, Midge got the next train downtown. She had a general idea of whereabouts the building was and planned to ask somebody for directions if she needed help once she got there. Two years ago, downtown had been an adventure for her. She went with Joel and looked out of cab windows in wonder at the people and the places that were different enough to what she knew to feel like she were a thousand miles away. Now, she walked the street from the subway station at a horse’s gait, side-stepping kids on bikes and darting down an alley for a shortcut, occasionally giving a distracted nod when somebody called a greeting.

In the end, she didn’t need to ask for directions. Which leads us back to: she heard them before she saw them.

A swarm surrounded the building, a hive of buzzing chit-chat and hungry gossip occasionally punctuated by a flash of a camera. The journalists were camped outside of the apartment building that Lenny was living in, garnering attention – from both the residents trying to enter and leave to the fizz and pop of a camera and half a dozen voices with double that amount of questions, and from the subtle hints of blue that Midge spotted among the crowd. The police were there. She assumed that they were using the excuse of monitoring the press to all but stalk Lenny.

Scowling, she headed for the front door. Dozens of bodies blocked the way, lounging against street lamps and sharing cups of steaming coffee from the bodega on the corner. They were talking casually, oblivious; some of them were _laughing_. Her stomach revolted at the sight.

“Excuse me-” Midge tried to call out, reaching the back of the crowd. If she was heard, they showed no sign. She made a second attempt, tapping a faceless suit on the shoulder and shouting. “Hello? Excuse me; I need to get through here please. Hello? Hey!”

A blank stare, a wall of bodies so consumed with hunting down her friend that she was lost in the crowd.

Midge dragged a hand through a stray strand of hair, cursing. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

The hive turned to her. A few gasps met her words, and the people closest to her looked eagerly around, faces alight and eager in search of their source. When they saw her standing there, the interest doubled, and soon she was facing down a dozen journalists.

“So _that_ you hear,” she said sarcastically, glaring at the nearest men. “Fine, perfect-”

“- who are you?” a man interrupted her.

“You here for Bruce?” another demanded, moving closer. The bodies turned towards her, leaving Midge yet again facing a wall.

“Hey, aren’t you the chick from _Miami After Dark_?”

“- his wife?”

“No, his sister, I heard-”

“I’m his mother, actually,” Midge eventually cut in. “ _Move_.”

She shoved her way through the crowd, who hounded her and chased her all the way to the steps of the building. It was a tricky dance, to make it through without giving them anything – the urge to kick off and tell them what she really thought of them was almost overwhelming. Almost. The only thing that stopped her was the thought that Lenny was somewhere behind the doors that she could see up ahead, and he was going to be having a much shittier time than she was.

Besides, she could call these creeps cockroaches all day and they wouldn’t hear anything except what they wanted to.

Stepping into the building, the swarm was blissfully left on the sidewalk as Midge crossed into a dingy-looking stairwell, but even that was a relief. Stepping to one side of the doorway, out of view, she paused to catch her breath, finding the wind knocked out of her on the fight to get through the crowd outside. It was _insane_ out there. She couldn’t take a step without being asked a question, buffeted between the _post_ and the _times_ as she struggled to get past a wall of boring suits. Wondering if it was like this for Lenny all the time, a spark of fear set into her at the thought that this was what being famous was . . . Midge forced herself to look up and refocus. (She had definite plans to talk to her father about his new career later. Journalists, she had decided, were one of the plagues warned about in the Torah).

She stood outside his door a few minutes and a flight of stairs later. Number 42. At least this one had all of its numbers, although the yellow metal was old and dirty, and the paint on the door was peeling away. Without hesitation, Midge rapped on the wood three times.

A muffled voice spoke from behind the door, getting closer until it was opened. “I told you people, you have no right to be here, leave me the hell a-” Lenny appeared as the door was thrown open, and froze at the sight of her, “-lone.”

He looked at her like he was seeing a ghost: a mixture of awe and fear. She didn’t pause for a moment before telling him, “You’re an idiot.”

“Midge, I-”

“An _idiot_ ,” she repeated. All of the emotions that she had been feeling for the past few days flowed into the word: the disappointment, anger, confusion – heartbreak. Her face trembled as she pressed her lips together, caught between fury and concern for her friend.

Lenny didn’t look well. His face was pale and a little sweaty, hair greasy and uncombed. Although he wore a fitted shirt – she didn’t think she had ever seen him in anything else - his shirt rumpled, untucked, like he had slept in it. Not to mention the smell of grass drifting from the apartment. Leaning with an arm against the door, he looked down the corridor behind her nervously, eyes darting around. When he glanced back down at her, he stepped to one side and gestured towards the apartment.

“Come in.”

Midge obliged, but did so angrily. Brushing quickly past him, she walked into a small living room. Inside was a brown couch with a tear in the side, a coffee table stacked with old magazines and books, and a half-smoked joint resting in a cigarette tray. It was the typical downtown apartment: a little dark, in need of a jolt of life, and hopefully not the scene of too many previous murders.

Taking a critical glance around to discern all of this, she turned back to him, her coat flying around her with the force of her movement. Lenny had closed the door and was standing just inside of the room. He stared at her with lidded eyes surrounded by dark circles, his weariness translating into his voice.

“What are you doing here?”

The words hurt. Midge tried not to let it show, but hearing it feels like waiting all night for him to show again. She had raced across town to see him, and she was pissed, but she was worried, too. He was her friend. No matter what else they were, that would always be true. But the horror on his face at seeing her told her clearly that Lenny was _not_ pleased to see her.

“I heard what happened,” she replied, like it was obvious. Then, in a quieter tone, she added. “You should have called me. I would have understood – you _know_ I would have. So why didn’t you?”

Lenny looked trapped. In the tiny apartment, surrounded by enemies, it is her words that pen him in. At the accusation, he dropped eye contact. It made him appear smaller.

After a pause, he said. “You shouldn’t have come. You – you can’t be here-” He stumbled over the word – and Lenny never fumbled for words. He was the most succinct person she knew – it was one of the reasons that she liked him. Lenny didn’t speak rashly. He took the time to weigh the words to see if they are found wanting before saying them. But in that room, his tongue tripped; his hands moved, but he wasn’t wearing a jacket to put them in pockets, so he settled for flexing his fingers and squeezing his hands together. “You should go.”

“-No,” she interrupted him. Compared to Lenny’s twitching as he began to pace back and forth, Midge was resolute and still. Standing with crossed arms, she shook her head. “Not until I get an explanation.”

“I stood you up,” Lenny said harshly. Crossing over to stand in front of her, he threw his hands up. “Is that what you want to hear? I didn’t show, so you should go.”

“That’s not true. You were in _jail_ , Lenny. That wasn’t your choice.”

“Yeah, it was. It always is.”

“What does that even mean?” Midge asked, shaking her head. Taking a step closer, she put a hand on Lenny’s shaking arm, “ _Talk to me._ ” 

He stepped away, electrified. “You need to go-”

“That’s not happening.”

“It’s my apartment!” he said, petulantly. Lenny looked like a kid as he faced her, pouting. “This is trespassing. You’re trespassing!”

“Why don’t you call the cops about it then?” she threw back, pointing to the door, “There’s a half dozen outside. I’m sure they’d be happy to come in here to talk, shall I go get them?”

She took two steps towards the door before he moved to stand in front of her. Lenny put his face in his hands, wiping his face with his palms before looking back at her.

“There are cops outside? They saw you?” Lenny looked desperately down at her, seeing the answer in her eyes. “ _Fuck.”_ He began to pace again, crossing to the window opposite and looking out to the street below, trying not to see seen through the curtains. Speaking almost to himself, he began to ramble. “I didn’t want this. I tried to - you’re not supposed to be here. You were supposed to stay out of this -”

“Says who?” she questioned. “ _You_?”

“Yes, me!” he shouted back blindly.

“Well seeing as we’re not _actually_ married, the total sum of opinions you get on what I’m _allowed_ to do is zero!” she yelled back. Midge stood a foot away from Lenny, shouting back in his face; close enough to see the micro-reactions flicker across his features. His eyebrow twitched slightly, and his lips tightened as they pressed together as she spoke, like he was swallowing a thoughtless, quick response. Although he had shouted, he didn’t _look_ angry, not truly. If anything, he looked desperate.

Midge expected him to shout back. Joel would have. Her parents would have. Hell, even Susie would have yelled back at her for a while longer in an argument before relenting. But not Lenny. Instead of responding, he took a deep, steadying breath. A wave passed across his features. Lenny’s face smoothed out forcibly, the angry lines on his forehead dropping as he visibly stilled, all of the frustration draining from his face. By the time he spoke again, the heat had left his voice.

He sounded tired, and a little broken. It was worse than the shouting. Midge wished he had simply argued back, it would have been easier to face than _this_.

“You’ve seen it out there,” Lenny said, quietly. “It’s a complete shit-show. And it’s not stopping anytime soon.”

Midge felt her face fall in realisation. The burning intensity of Lenny’s gaze, the fear mingled in with the frustration on his face . . . it made sense, in a sudden moment akin to a gut-punch. She blew out a sharp breath and said, “This is why you didn’t call. Because of . . . all that outside. You wanted me to think that you’d stood me up to keep me away from it.” Lenny said nothing, looking down and nudging the leg of the couch with his shoe guiltily. It wasn’t an answer, but it spoke volumes all the same. What he didn’t expect were her next words: “-how fucking dare you.”

The words suggested a question, but there wasn’t one in Midge’s voice. There was just a flat, enraged accusation: she began to pace in the same way that he had been previously, working everything through in her mind and constructing a timeline of what had happened. She had a date planned with Lenny, who got arrested the day before and decided to keep this fact to himself out of some male idiocy. _Unbelievable_.

Switching movements, he stood dead still and watched her with wide eyes as she paced. After a moment, he ventured cautiously. “Midge?”

“No, you be quiet, right now-” she snapped back. Midge was building herself up, the same sparking anger that had fuelled her early sets rising up. Jamming a finger in his direction, she told him. “That was _not_ your decision to make. You don’t get to decide what I know and choose for me whether or not to be involved in this. That’s _my_ choice. Mine.”

“But this is _my_ mess, not yours,” he argued. “And I can take it. I can handle the cops and the press and the shit storm outside, but-” Lenny bit the inside of his cheek, shaking his head. “-I can have my name dragged through the dirt all day, but the thought of any of that shit splashing back on you? Nah, that I can’t stand.”

“Again, not your fucking choice!”

“I was trying to protect you-”

“- I never asked you for that! Not once!” Midge took a breath, but it didn’t steady her the way it had Lenny. Getting more air into her lungs just meant that she had more breath to shout with. The frustration building inside of her spilled out through her body, as she gestured animatedly with her hands, going on. “You wanna know one of the reasons why I liked spending time with you? You don’t lie to me. And I don’t mean lying like . . . lying about where you’ve been or if you’ve been drinking or _fucking your secretary_ , I mean . . . you don’t hide things from me. You . . . showed me the world out there that I – I didn’t know anything about. You didn’t sugar-coat it. You just . . . took me out there and let me see for myself. You made me feel like I _could_. And I did.”

Midge worked her way up to a firm, triumphant statement. She stood with her feet planted, facing him with determination turning her spine to steel, setting her gaze alight. Always a passionate talker – it was what made her a great stage presence and a formidable opponent in a fight – Midge spoke the truth as she saw it, laying it at his feet.

Lenny’s head tilted to one side as she spoke, listening intently. He shifted on the couch as she got to full steam, a prolonged wince that cast his face into shame, unable to look away. A lot of people would have, under the intensity of Midge’s gaze. Lenny remained absolute, hearing her out, even though his body language betrayed his emotions. Shoulders slumped, he was the shadow cast as a result of her towering presence.

“That’s why. This-” Lenny waved a hand, indicating all of her. “This is why I did it.”

“Yeah, for me, you said,” she replied derisively. “It sounds just as patronising the second time.”

He sighed, “I never intended it to be.”

“What was it you were saying the road to hell was paved with?”

Throwing that back in his face was a low blow, and she knew it. Lenny reacted, lips pressing together tightly as he shifted, but it equally seemed to re-ignite the fire inside of him. Sitting up straighter, Lenny leaned on his knees and began to argue back again, pointing in her direction as his voice got progressively louder.

“You want to talk about the road to hell? You got a life, Midge! Kids, a house, a nice family . . . what do you think this’d do to them, huh? You think the circus outside would keep them out of it?”

She flinched. “I could handle it.”

Lenny made a disbelieving noise. “And what about your career? I meant it every time I said that you were gonna be bigger than all of us one day. You get in trouble now when it’s just starting, you risk throwing it all away. I’m not worth it,” he shook his head, to all the world a broken man. “- I’m not worth _you_.”

Midge felt her heart in her throat. With all of its strength pounding there, she couldn’t reply, shaking her head as Lenny hung his head. Dropping to the couch, he slumped down, rubbing his eyes. She saw this through glassy eyes, blinking rapidly to keep the tears from falling; by the time he looked back up at her, Midge was barely hanging on.

“Why did you come here? Why on earth would you do that for yourself?” Lenny’s voice cracked. He sounded exhausted, staring at her with scared eyes and a sweat-stained shirt.

Her answer was simple.

“Because you’re my friend, and I love you.”

In any other time and place, using the L-word would have scared the shit out of her. It was bigger than the four letters it contained. It was heavier, more important. While she gave it away often, to her kids and her parents and Susie and Joel, she genuinely _meant_ it every time she said it. She wasn’t afraid to tell people that she loved them; she never had been. But saying it to someone like Lenny was different. The kind of L-word she felt for him was evolving, growing bigger, it wasn’t the steady ground to stand on that it was with everybody else. Despite the ambiguity of the kind of love she felt for him, it was true that it existed. As a friend, a mentor – as something more – she loved Lenny.

It was true, and so she said it.

His face fell slack at the words. The wetness in Lenny’s eyes evaporated as he stared at her, and Midge wiped a hand across her cheek to the same end. In a mirror of their night in Miami, Midge and Lenny stared at one another for too long. However, the image was twisted this time: the room was not swelling with music that thumped through their bodies like a heartbeat, bathed in red light and passionate. Instead, the room was silent. The light came from a naked bulb in the middle of the room and through a gap in the hastily drawn curtains, the stark daylight exposing the myriad of dust swirling around in the air. The look shared between them was still charged with tension, but of a different kind.

Lenny was apparently thinking the same thing. “You’re staring,” he said.

With eyes too sad, he smiled weakly. His lips tugged upwards for a heartbeat, but faltered and fell as soon as the smile formed. Midge couldn’t even bring herself to attempt one.

“So are you.”

Slowly, she crossed the room, dropping her purse on the floor by the couch and sitting beside him in silence. Smoke from the joint on the table drifted up hazily, and Lenny picked up a half-empty tumbler of an amber-coloured drink and drained the glass. In the quiet, the sound of the gathered press reached them through the window, a dull reminder of what they couldn’t outrun. Midge was _tired._ Sitting back on the shitty, worn-out couch, she smelled the ash lingering on the leather as she leaned into it, closing her eyes. A dip that she felt told her that Lenny had copied her, so she tilted her head to the right and opened her eyes, looking at his profile: the peak of his hair, line of his nose, a mirror of the way she was feeling etched into his face.

He must have felt her gaze, because Lenny looked over at her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Those two words were the truth, spoken softly. The quietest truth could ring louder than a shouted lie. In their simplicity, they contained an apology for all of it – the argument, hiding the truth from her, for the entire god-damned situation that had gotten too big to hold, even with two hands. Luckily for them, between them they had four.

“I know,” she replied. Forgiving Lenny was easy, especially when he meant it. “Me too. For shouting, not for coming over here to call you an idiot. I was right for that.”

Lenny chuckled, nodding in acknowledgement. It lightened his face for a brief moment, and Midge was proud for that. One laugh from Lenny was worth a room full of people.

“What are you gonna do?” she asked, looking away from him and up towards the ceiling. It was painted white, with sweeping brush-strokes that stood out, creating swirls and patterns which she traced with her eyes, like a sky full of stars. Echoed in him was her, and they knew one another too well for any pretenses, lying back on his couch like philosophers putting the world to bed.

“I don’t know,” Lenny admitted. “Get a lawyer, try to fight this. End up here again in a month. I can’t give this up now.”

The words resonated with Midge. She could feel them in her chest, filling it with a familiar ache of recognition. She sighed, and then replied. “I know what you mean.”

“You thinking about it?” Lenny asked, catching her eye. “Getting back on stage?”

She couldn’t lie or pretend while looking at him, so she said. “I thought I could just walk away, after what happened with Shy. I really meant to. But I . . . can’t. You were right. This isn’t just a – a thing for me to do. It’s more than that now.”

Lenny smiled, slow and dangerous as a forest fire. There was pride in his eyes, and it made her stomach flip with pleasure, spreading warmth from her stomach right up to the top of her head and the tips of her toes. She felt her lip curl up, in a smile that threatened to catch across her entire face. Lenny’s grin never wavered as he spoke.

“I’m glad one of us will still be up there, even if I end up down the river. Somebody should still be giving people something to think about.”

The growing smile on Midge’s face paused. He was right. She wouldn’t admit it to him, of course, but Lenny had said exactly the right thing at the right time, and she knew what to do now. After a moment’s thought, the smile emerged on her face, breaking out into a full-fledged grin as her eyes unfocused at the same time that her mind went into overdrive with a billion thoughts.

“Oh, no,” Lenny said to her right. “I know that look. Every time you get that look on your face, you do something brilliant that gets you into trouble.”

Midge blinked, the world coming back into focus. There was a plan forming in her mind, the pieces slotting together as she mentally listed the things that she would need to do in the next few hours. There was a lot to plan – but it wasn’t impossible. Not by a long shot.

Sitting up quickly, she scooped her purse up from the ground and stood, taking two steps towards the door before another thought struck her. Turning back, she saw Lenny sitting on the couch, a worried look on his face as he watched her go.

“What are you planning?” he asked, eyebrows creased.

“Will you try and stop me?” she replied, hesitating for a second. Midge was genuinely concerned about the answer. Lenny’s reply wouldn’t stop her. Whatever his response was, she was resolved to follow through with the idea shooting around her head at a million miles an hour. No, Lenny’s next words would not change her plan, it was bigger than him now - but she _wanted_ him by her side.

He looked at her for a moment, then said. “I don’t think for a second that I could.”

Lenny smiled, and she grinned back.

*

The Gaslight appeared the same as ever: dim, sticky floored, packed with people drinking ‘coffee’ that smelled like booze and cost the same as booze but mysteriously disappeared the moment a cop walked in. At least the toilet was fixed. Midge walked in with a faint flutter of apprehension; she didn’t think that she would ever walk onto that stage again.

Entering the club, she looked for Susie – it was less a matter of looking for a person than a hat about two feet below everybody else’s head height. Midge’s eyes fell on her friend within thirty seconds, and she was laughing to herself as she crossed the room to meet Susie.

“Hey,” Midge chirped, stepping to Susie’s side. “Is everything set?”

Susie started, jumping in her shoes. “Christ, we gotta get you a fucking bell or something.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Despite her projected confidence, Midge glanced apprehensively around the room. It was fairly full, with most of the tables occupied, eyes watching the act currently on stage – some sort of accordion-magic song/act that she squinted at in confusion. Susie’s voice broke through her distraction.

“Are you sure about this, Midge?” Susie asked the question that Midge was too afraid to voice. She was a good manager and a good friend. Reading Midge’s mind, she saw the hesitation, and gave her a way out if she wanted it. Even though this was what Susie wanted, for Midge to go back on stage and work together again, even despite the fact that this decision gave Susie a second chance as much as it did Midge – she gave her a choice. “You don’t have to do this, you know. You don’t owe it to anyone. Not me and not – not Lenny, either.”

Midge was so, so grateful for Susie.

With a smile, she stepped in and wrapped her arms around the other woman before Susie could protest. The hug was brief, and Midge stepped back to see Susie’s stunned face at the physical affection.

“What was _that_?” Susie asked brusquely.

“A hug. It’s how normal people show their friends that they love them.”

“I know what it fucking _was_ ,” Susie replied, “what was _that_?”

Midge smiled affectionately down at her, responding to her earlier comments. “I’m not doing this for Lenny. I’m doing it for me. I’ve spent all this time thinking about what to use my voice for – why not this? Why not stand up now, for something I believe in? If I don’t speak up now . . .” Midge trailed off, bit her lip as she thought. “It has to be for something.”

“And you’re sure this is it?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Midge replied. Her voice grew distracted as she spotted movement at the entrance out of the corner of her eye, refocusing on the doorway.

Lenny walked in. He wore a fresh suit, and looked like he had showered and shaved since that afternoon. He wasn’t completely back to the way she remembered him – he still had dark circles around his eyes and weariness in the way that he carried himself – but he looked _better_. When his dark eyes scanned the room and landed on her, his grin was wider than it had been in a while.

Giving her a look that silently asked _are you sure about this_ , Lenny paused at the door. Midge glanced back towards the stage, around the room, to Susie – then, she looked back at him and nodded.

She was sure. She was ready.

Responding with a bow and flourish, Lenny walked into the room, and it exploded. Not literally, of course. Eyes turned to him, whispers erupting as people nudged their friends and pointed at _the_ Lenny Bruce. When the assorted press followed him in, it tripled in energy. Among the journalists, reporters and photographers who filed into the room in Lenny’s wake, all eagerly pulling out notebooks and recorders anticipating a set, there were men in inconspicuous suits and shifting eyes that were about as subtle as a full NYPD uniform could have been.

Midge set her shoulders as Lenny walked through the room shaking hands before taking a seat at an empty table and facing the stage. This had been her plan: Lenny had a media circus following him, and lead them like a pied piper into the room. The buzz was instant. People expected Lenny to get on stage and get arrested, even as he sat mock-contentedly watching the accordion player, who had missed half a dozen beats in shock and was trying to pull his set back despite every eye being turned away from the stage.

It was time.

With a nod to Susie as the accordion player creaked his final choked note to a smattering of distracted applause, Midge walked towards the stage. Each step she took felt heavy, weighted with importance. The lights hit her, the heat familiar on the back of her neck as she stepped up to the stage, the last chance to change her mind – but she chose to take the final steps, and then she was on stage.

Turning, Midge was faced with the bright spotlight as she stood in front of the microphone, one hand reaching out to grip it loosely. Nerves fleetingly crossed her mind, erased in a heartbeat as she squinted past the light to see Lenny sitting in the middle of the room: and they were all looking at him, the entire damn world – but he was looking at her.

Midge smiled, and spoke. “Hey, everybody.”

She took a deep breath. “I don’t know if any of you remember me, I used to perform here quite a bit. Or if not this-” she gestured to her face, “- then you might remember these.” Another gesture, this time at her tits. A laughter hit the room as people began to pay attention to her, turning towards the stage as she let out her own small laugh, remembering the night two years ago when she had gotten onto that stage for the first time and flashed the audience drunkenly.

“I haven’t performed here in a few months – or anywhere, in fact. I quit. For a while anyway. I never expected to be back on this stage again, listening to Johns take a whizz ten feet away and steal my thunder.”

Midge gestured lazily to the bathroom by the side of the stage, mentally censoring _piss_ to _whizz_. She was aware of the cops in the audience, and a new set arrived as if on cue at the entrance, sharing a look with men in the group that had arrived with Lenny. They were definitely following him, looking for a reason to arrest him. Not wanting to get dragged off stage before she had a chance to really say anything, Midge began to talk, carefully choosing her words to toe the line of acceptance for the time being.

“I tried to give it up, to walk away, but I guess I couldn’t do it. Got the shakes, started trying to tell my four year old jokes that went _entirely_ over his head. When your audience laughs at a fart noise as much as he does your stuff on panties and priests, you know you’re getting desperate. So here I am, back here again. My name is Mrs. Maisel, and I’m an addict.”

“Hi, Mrs. Maisel,” the crowd chorused back dutifully.

“Good, you already know your lines,” she cracked. A laugh went through the room, and yeah, she really _was_ addicted to it. “I mean, there are worse things to be addicted to, right? And stand up is cheaper than alcoholism and I gain less weight than the snacking side-effect of taking drugs.”

A scandalised laugh rippled around the room, and Midge paused. She was pushing it a little now.

“The thing is, though, not everyone agrees with me. Comparatively, comedy is harmless. No one gets hurt by what I say up here, unless we’re taking side-splitting laughter seriously. It’s like I tell my son: sticks and stones break bones - but tell another kid to kiss your ass and they’ll do more than just that.”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding-” she said, waving a hand, “My son never got beat up again. I got him brass knuckles to really teach the other kid a lesson.”

There was a louder laugh at that, and she noticed a thin smile under Susie’s hat. It kept her going, as Midge finally detached the microphone from the stand and picked it up, starting to wander around the stage as she spoke.

“The point is – and there is a point, despite all outward appearances – we tell our kids to use their words. But then when people get up on stages or at rallies and do nothing but talk – they get arrested. They get silenced for using their words instead of their fists to try and make a difference.”

She paused, tilting her head. “Me talking up here does no real harm. And yes, I’m aware that I’ve described it as an addiction, but there’s a difference between a booze-hound stumbling into traffic because he’s too drunk to stand and me waking up at 5am in a cold sweat to write down a joke about how men are like racehorses-” She paused, then elaborated casually with a roll of her hand, “- quick out of the gate and usually down before the finish line. I digress-”

Lenny’s laugh was loud this time, as she choked back her own to continue. “And yet, comedy gets treated as seriously as other addictions by some members of society among us tonight. Yes, give it up for Officer Peluso, ladies and gentlemen-”

Midge gestured towards the cops at the door. She recognised the beat cop who had pulled her off stage before. At her word, Lenny started up the applause for the police – she saw his sarcastic smile as he did – and soon the crowd were all clapping while the cop shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

“Now, Officer P and I go way back. We’re like the officer-and-arrestee equivalent of being old college buddies. How are the kids? They good?” she asked, to laughter. Midge grinned smugly, walking towards the front of the stage. “And of course you all know my other friend here tonight, Lenny Bruce.”

The roof was well and truly rattled by the audience’s reaction. They cheered and applauded for Lenny so loudly that the stage throbbed under her feet, and Midge pretended to be offended.

“Oh, _he_ gets the whistles and applause, I see how it is.” There was another laugh and a few whistles in response, but she shook her head, “-no, you keep your pity passes at me, it’s too late now. I’ll continue with the trend of life being the only thing screwing me recently.”

She was worried that joke might mean the end of her set, and saw the cops in the crowd exchange a look as laughter erupted in the room. Silently communicating, Midge watched the cops look from her to the audience – the very packed, very loudly supportive of Lenny audience. It brought her a little more time, as they stood back without approaching the stage just yet.

“Obviously, you all know Lenny. I know for a fact that most of you wish that it was him standing up here instead of me, and not just because he cuts a good figure in a suit,” she paused, as Lenny’s laugh was the loudest in the room at that. Then Midge turned the microphone cord in her fingers and went on, “You want him to be up here because . . . Lenny says things that nobody else dares to. Lenny causes a scandal. Lenny gets dragged off stage before he can finish speaking. Whether you’re here to laugh or to get a headline, _he’s_ the one you listen to. And the one _they_ don’t want you to.”

Midge gestured towards the cops in the room. The crowd fell silent. Heads turned towards the uniforms, then back to her, a ripple of thought spreading through the room. A mixture of nervousness and eager anticipation filled the air. On edge, the knowledge that something was about to happen still wagging tongues and drew every eye to Midge standing on the stage.

“And I mean, think about it, _really_ think about it – why is that? What is so dangerous about what Lenny says that brought you all here today? Why are some words okay for me to say, but others aren’t?” she asked. Midge looked around the room. The silence held court. “I have a theory. You guys okay if I run a little experiment here tonight?” There was a small cheer in response, and she nodded. “Alright –one moment, I just need something from my purse first.”

She turned, grinning as she clicked the microphone back into the stand in order to free her hands. After grabbing her purse from the floor, Midge stood at the microphone, making a show of rooting through her bag.

“Let’s see, I got – ah, good old lipsticks one through to four,” she said, lifting a handful of pinks to laughter. “Oh, and here, my change purse, my card purse, my tampon purse-” a surprised laugh, mostly female, interrupted her as she looked up seriously, “- you know, the everyday essentials. No woman has less than two purses in her handbag at any time. And if she just has the one, there’s always that one pocket that _nobody_ but her is allowed to go in, if you know what I mean. But when you do need a guy to pass you something from that pocket?”

Midge paused, eyes comically wide. “ _No way_. He’ll pass you the entire bag to avoid having to go in that pocket! I’m serious. Women could hide nuclear codes in their purses if they put them in the same place as their tampons, because no man is _ever_ looking in there.”

Half-laughing to herself as the audience applauded, Midge returned her gaze to her handbag. Knowing that she had built up the laughter in the room again, she pulled out the true object of her searching –

“This is my daughter’s,” she said, pulling out a plastic toy keyboard from her purse. The audience laughed at the absurdity of it being there, and she held it up for them to see. “I _hate_ this thing. Every parent in the room just regressed to a nightmare state at seeing it. Because every child with one of these – these torture machines - knows how to use it,” She nodded, mock seriously. “Yeah, you know what I mean. Every hour of every day it’s just-”

Midge pressed a few keys at random. The toy let out a cow mooing noise, a cymbal clash, and a frog ribbetting; the sound amplified by the microphone, the audience began to chuckle at the sounds. She held up a finger to them, shaking her head. “Hear variations of that every day for 6 months and _then_ laugh!”

They laughed louder at that, so she explained. “I hate this thing. Tonight, though, it’s going to help me. Because we can all agree that there’s nothing obscene about _this_ -” Midge hit a key, and this time a car horn played. She bit back a smile at the aptness of that. “Right? There is nothing offensive about _any_ of the sounds that this piece of plastic my kid plays with could make.”

“So, here’s my theory about why my friend Lenny is currently out on bail for obscenity charges,” she said. This was the moment. Under the blazing stage lights, Midge was exposed to the world, literally standing in front of the press and painting a target on herself. Nerves gnawed at her insides for a heartbeat, but then she saw Lenny sitting in the crowd, face still as he watched her.

 _You sure this is worth it?_ He’d asked her that afternoon, before she left his apartment. Midge had played it off with a reckless laugh, not having the answer to hand. For all she talked, and talked, and talked – words failed her at the oddest of times.

Seeing him in that moment, she knew for sure.

“I think that they arrest him for pointing out what a [clucking] bad job they’re doing. And I’m not just talking about the police – I’m talking about the public officials, the senators, the entire [mooing] government. The people that he jokes about are the ones in power, and he brings people from all over this city together to listen. The workers, the women, the poor _and_ the middle class all in one room. You’ll notice that I left out the rich – after all, there are some people who’d never be caught dead in this [horn]-hole, no matter how popular the entertainment is.”

The cops at the edges of the room took a warning step towards her, which Midge noticed from the corner of her eyes. Against the spotlight, she couldn’t read their expressions precisely. But their movement towards her paired with darting looks at the laughing, cheering crowd told a story of their own. She gripped the keyboard tighter.

“Everybody here has a voice. Whether you’re just somebody looking for something to do on a Friday night, or someone who makes their living on words. Our voices and our right to free speech is a foundation of this country. Nobody told Abe Lincoln to shut the [bleat] up at Gettysburg, and this country would be a lot different if they did. We built our nation on great speakers and orators, great writers who would spend months on treaties and papers . . . if we allow our voices to be silenced, then where does that leave us?”

Midge paused, looking out at the crowd. People were listening now.

“Is there really a difference between this-” she hit a key, and a foghorn blared out through the microphone, “-and me saying fuck?”

“That’s it-” one of the cops in the room began to walk towards her, pointing with his finger, “- get down from there, you’re coming with us.”

At his words, the crowd turned. People began to stand up, and the quiet was broken by a game of telephone that went around the room. As the officers tried to make their way to Midge on the stage, struggling to get through the packed room as many people refused to aid them by moving out of their way, she turned back towards the microphone.

“The cops, they want to tell you that Lenny is a criminal for saying obscene things on stage. They want you to believe that it’s the words themselves that are dangerous. But really, is there a difference between [spring noise] and shit? Or [cat yowling] and motherfucker?” That one got a gasp and a quick laugh, but Midge did not stop. “No. Because there isn’t. The threat isn’t a sound or a word – it’s what they mean. It’s what he stands for.” She looked at Lenny, and felt as if her heart would burst. “And I’m standing with him.”

The cop broke in. “Enough! Let me through, this has gone on long enough.”

“I’ve been Mrs. Maisel, and if there’s one thing I want you to take away from tonight, it’s to start questioning why words are so dangerous. You might just figure out that this is all bull-[fart noise].”

She might have planned that one. The rest of the noises had been random, but that one she had picked beforehand. It was too good an opportunity to miss.

Midge was escorted out of the Gaslight by the cops, as the crowd got to their feet in her defense. Laughter, applause, and shouts of dissent ended her set. She had performed for bigger audiences, and left to louder applause, but to her, it was the best send off that she had ever received. Even as she was grabbed by the arm and shoved roughly towards the door, she was smiling – as they passed Lenny’s table, he was on his feet. She was close enough to nod at him to let him know that she was okay, seeing the pride mixed with worry on his face. His handsome features smoothed out as he watched her go, turning into a grin bright enough to power the entire god-damn city.

 _Yeah_ , she thought as she was bundled into the back of a squad car, _it was worth it_.

*

Midge was bailed out on the same night that she was arrested.

After a couple of hours in a holding cell with another woman, who was in for buying stock at a rival company after learning that her husband was about to tank his own company and leave her for his secretary (“we should start a club,” Midge told her, “get jackets”), she was let out by an officer with a sour face. She wished her cell-mate good luck as she headed for the staircase to collect her personal belongings and letter with the hearing information, and told the other woman that drinking and throwing darts at a board with the secretary’s face on was a cathartic experience.

“You need to-” the officer began to say, but Midge cut him off.

“I know the drill, junior. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

She would claim humour, but honestly, she was just riding off the high of the night and tired enough to really not give a shit about being polite. With a grim smile, she saluted the officer and walked towards the staircase. Slow clapping from the bottom of the stairs caught her attention, as Midge glanced up from taking the hand-rail to find its source, and grinned at the sight.

Lenny stood at the bottom of the stairs, and applauded her as she began to walk down it. He was wearing the same light brown coat that he seemed to live in, with an unlit cigarette ready between his lips; against the ugly tiled and cheap lighting of the precinct, he was the most alive looking thing in the room.

When she got to the bottom stair, eye-to-eye with him, Lenny stopped clapping. Never taking his eyes off of her, he shook his head in disbelief, staring at her as if she personally hung the sun that morning.

“You’re something else,” he told her.

If he kept looking at her like that, she was going to kiss him. So Midge joked instead, “Always nice to meet a fan.” Midge side-stepped Lenny, hearing his bark of laughter as she stopped by the front desk. Grabbing her plastic bag of valuables and paperwork, she spun on a heel. “Although this makes me more like your accomplice.”

“Wait ‘til we turn over that bank on 43rd,” he replied. Lenny stood to her left, at the top of the stairs leading outside. Sparing a smug grin to the desk officer at the sharp look which he received for the comment, he extended his elbow in her direction.

“Mrs. Maisel,” he said, and she laughed as she took the offered arm, linking her own through it.

“Mr. Bruce.”

They took the steps together, leaving the police station and stepping into the late night air – or early morning, depending on your perspective. Above their heads, the sky was the hazy grey that heralded dawn’s approach; trucks flew by with the morning editions of the papers, and the early risers began to flock to the streets to avoid the commuter rush. Cold air hit Midge as she stepped out onto the street, turning her head towards the sky and closing her eyes in bliss. She hadn’t seen the morning chorus in a while.

“You okay?” Lenny asked. She opened her eyes to find him looking at her strangely, question in his eyes.

She nodded, lip curving up. “Getting there.”

He tilted his head towards their left, and she nodded, following him as he led the way down the street. Arms still linked, they wandered side by side as the city woke around them. It wasn’t something that she expected, but she had missed being out all night and seeing these quiet hours inhabited only by the sleepless, and the dreamers.

“That was quite a show, Mrs. Maisel,” Lenny told her after a few minutes. The cigarette in his lips was lit now, and she stole it as he chuckled. “You quite literally almost brought the house down back there. I do not envy your friend cleaning that mess up.”

Giving an exaggerated shrug, she replied breezily, “I live to please.”

“You know this changes everything, right? Please tell me that you thought about that.”

The fear she had recognised on his face earlier that day in his apartment had crept into his voice. Lenny was watching her, intently as ever, but Midge could see through his mask now. Or at least she thought that she could. Everybody knew Lenny Bruce – scandal was his middle name, never far from a bottle or a precinct, with his lawyer as his first speed-dial and a woman as his second. It must be exhausting, being him.

She knew the feeling.

“Bruce is your stage name, isn’t it?” she asked instead. “Like Mrs. Maisel is mine.”

“Yeah,” Lenny squinted. “ _I_ didn’t keep my shitty ex-husbands name for my career, though.”

Midge ignored the barbed comment.

“What is it? Your real name?”

“Why?” Lenny asked. She took a drag from his cigarette and shrugged, tossing the remainder of the butt to the pavement as they crossed the street; he squished it under his heel as he took a step into the road. Focusing on judging the best time to dash across the road to avoid the oncoming cars, he kept his eyes averted and replied. “Schneider.”

In an instant, his arm shifted as he let it untangle from hers, fingertips nudging the exposed skin on her arm until they reached her hand and grabbed on tightly. Lenny tugged her forwards, and they dashed across the road, Midge seeing the flash of a headlight in her peripheral vision as her heeled feet protested at the sudden movement. The sound of the car horn hit her as they made it to the other side.

Laughing, she jerked a thumb in the passing cars direction. “I think he just told us to fuck off,” she said. Lenny didn’t laugh. “Don’t think so hard,” Midge broke in, “you’ll hurt yourself.”

He let go of her hand. “Midge,” Lenny said. “Be serious.”

“Why would I do a silly thing like that?” she responded. Heart still beating fast from their dash across traffic, Midge rolled her shoulders and held her hands out, aiming for an expression of honesty. The frigid air filled her lungs and left clouds around her face, and she felt _awake_.

“Look at me,” she instructed. Lenny’s forlorn face turned in her direction, and she took a step closer to him, giving herself no place to hide, and leaving him nowhere to run. They had to simply face one another. “Of course I thought about this,” she said, voice leaving no room for argument. It was the same matter-of-fact tone that she used on Ethan and other difficult men in her life, and usually worked a treat. “They’re trying to pin you to the wall for everybody to see. _So let them_. Let them see that you’re speaking truths that people are afraid of. Let them see that . . . that it’s all just bullshit! You’re just saying words, we decide what they mean. They can try to make you an example . . . but they can’t silence all of us. I did that gig to show them that. I’ll do the same tomorrow, and the next night, and the one after that – as long as it takes. If they want to send you to hell-” a small, sure smile, “-they’ll have to send me too.”

“And you did it anyway?”

“Yes,” she answered. “I decided that it was worth the risk.”

Against the grey light tinged with blue as the black of night was erased slowly, changing hue in a subtle shift that lifted the weight of the sky to make day, Lenny looked down at her for a long moment. His mouth hung open, a crease between his eyebrows, a titan of sorts, holding the doubt and worry on his face. Somewhere, a bird began to sing. Pressing his lips together, Lenny swallowed before he spoke.

“I reckon I owe you dinner, but we’re more likely to find breakfast at this time of morning,” he said, gesturing with his head behind him, “- you coming?”

The smile that dared to flick across her lips was a real one. “You paying?”

“What sort of date would I be if I didn’t?” he replied, as they began to walk again. “Although I _did_ just bail you out . . .”

“I like it,” Midge said, as they reached a corner.

“What?”

“Schnieder.”

Lenny snorted, the sound dry. “ _Nobody_ likes the name Schnieder. There’s a reason I changed it. It sounds like a high school principle. Worse, nobody can spell it. You try getting _Leonard Schnieder_ on a marquee.”

“You realise that you’re talking to Miriam Maisel, right?”

“That’s alliterative. It flows from the tongue, has a certain . . . charm to it. Although you’re right, you really should change the Maisel part.”

Midge let out a low breath, a huff that ended in a shake of her head. “It’s my stage name, people know it now. What would you have me change it to? Back to Weissman? That’s even worse than Schnieder!”

“I thought you liked it?!”

Their bickering joined the birdsong and distant honking of horns, harmonising with the morning song of the city. In the low light, nobody paid much attention to them as they walked, arguing and laughing just as often. Nobody commented when Lenny took her hand again, but held it more gently this time, thumb rubbing over the back of her hand. There were no cameras or cops or families to watch them, slowly ambling their way with no particular destination in mind.

It didn’t matter, though. They still had plenty of time.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! I am currently @deadtedkord on tumblr.
> 
> I had so much fun writing this one after Losing my Mind after 3x05. I made a few choices here that probably justify explanation like a) Midge quitting post s3. It seems likely to me! As a highly empathetic person who has just signed a lease, she is reflecting on hurting a friend and needing a job. b) her continued tensions with Rose. maybe I'm projecting. maybe we found Midge's talk with Rose about Rose not even *trying* to understand her choices hit too close to home, ladies and gays. c) Midge and Lenny arguing!! We've only seen them support each other on the show, but add in complicated emotions and tension and they're bound to argue a bit! Having them argue was fun. 
> 
> But this was my first time writing for mrs. maisel and I enjoyed it, I hope you did too. Happy New Year!


End file.
